The tetrahedron is one kind of pyramid, which is a polyhedron with a flat polygon base and triangular faces connecting the base to a common point; in the case of a tetrahedron the base is a triangle (any of the four faces can be considered the base), so a tetrahedron is also known as a "triangular pyramid".

In a regular tetrahedron, all faces are the same size and shape (congruent) and all edges are the same length.

Five tetrahedra are laid flat on a plane, with the highest 3-dimensional points marked as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. These points are then attached to each other and a thin volume of empty space is left, where the five edge angles do not quite meet.

Expressed symmetrically as 4 points on the unit sphere, centroid at the origin, with lower face level, the vertices are:

v1 = ( sqrt(8/9), 0 , -1/3 )

v2 = ( -sqrt(2/9), sqrt(2/3), -1/3 )

v3 = ( -sqrt(2/9), -sqrt(2/3), -1/3 )

v4 = ( 0 , 0 , 1 )

with the edge length of sqrt(8/3).

Still another set of coordinates are based on an alternatedcube or demicube with edge length 2. This form has Coxeter diagram and Schläfli symbol h{4,3}. The tetrahedron in this case has edge length 2√2. Inverting these coordinates generates the dual tetrahedron, and the pair together form the stellated octahedron, whose vertices are those of the original cube.

With respect to the base plane the slope of a face (2√2) is twice that of an edge (√2), corresponding to the fact that the horizontal distance covered from the base to the apex along an edge is twice that along the median of a face. In other words, if C is the centroid of the base, the distance from C to a vertex of the base is twice that from C to the midpoint of an edge of the base. This follows from the fact that the medians of a triangle intersect at its centroid, and this point divides each of them in two segments, one of which is twice as long as the other (see proof).

For a regular tetrahedron with side length a, radius R of its circumscribing sphere, and distances di from an arbitrary point in 3-space to its four vertices, we have[6]

The proper rotations, (order-3 rotation on a vertex and face, and order-2 on two edges) and reflection plane (through two faces and one edge) in the symmetry group of the regular tetrahedron

The vertices of a cube can be grouped into two groups of four, each forming a regular tetrahedron (see above, and also animation, showing one of the two tetrahedra in the cube), the symmetries of a regular tetrahedron correspond to half of those of a cube: those that map the tetrahedra to themselves, and not to each other.

The tetrahedron is the only Platonic solid that is not mapped to itself by point inversion.

The regular tetrahedron has 24 isometries, forming the symmetry groupTd, [3,3], (*332), isomorphic to the symmetric group, S4. They can be categorized as follows:

rotation about an axis through a vertex, perpendicular to the opposite plane, by an angle of ±120°: 4 axes, 2 per axis, together 8 ((1 2 3), etc.; 1 ± i ± j ± k/2)

rotation by an angle of 180° such that an edge maps to the opposite edge: 3 ((1 2)(3 4), etc.; i, j, k)

reflections in a plane perpendicular to an edge: 6

reflections in a plane combined with 90° rotation about an axis perpendicular to the plane: 3 axes, 2 per axis, together 6; equivalently, they are 90° rotations combined with inversion (x is mapped to −x): the rotations correspond to those of the cube about face-to-face axes

The two skew perpendicular opposite edges of a regular tetrahedron define a set of parallel planes. When one of these planes intersects the tetrahedron the resulting cross section is a rectangle.[7] When the intersecting plane is near one of the edges the rectangle is long and skinny. When halfway between the two edges the intersection is a square, the aspect ratio of the rectangle reverses as you pass this halfway point. For the midpoint square intersection the resulting boundary line traverses every face of the tetrahedron similarly. If the tetrahedron is bisected on this plane, both halves become wedges.

The tetrahedron can also be represented as a spherical tiling, and projected onto the plane via a stereographic projection, this projection is conformal, preserving angles but not areas or lengths. Straight lines on the sphere are projected as circular arcs on the plane.

In a trirectangular tetrahedron the three face angles at one vertex are right angles. If all three pairs of opposite edges of a tetrahedron are perpendicular, then it is called an orthocentric tetrahedron. When only one pair of opposite edges are perpendicular, it is called a semi-orthocentric tetrahedron. An isodynamic tetrahedron is one in which the cevians that join the vertices to the incenters of the opposite faces are concurrent, and an isogonic tetrahedron has concurrent cevians that join the vertices to the points of contact of the opposite faces with the inscribed sphere of the tetrahedron.

The isometries of an irregular (unmarked) tetrahedron depend on the geometry of the tetrahedron, with 7 cases possible; in each case a 3-dimensional point group is formed. Two other isometries (C3, [3]+), and (S4, [2+,4+]) can exist if the face or edge marking are included. Tetrahedral diagrams are included for each type below, with edges colored by isometric equivalence, and are gray colored for unique edges.

It gives 6 isometries, corresponding to the 6 isometries of the base. As permutations of the vertices, these 6 isometries are the identity 1, (123), (132), (12), (13) and (23), forming the symmetry group C3v, isomorphic to the symmetric group, S3. A triangular pyramid has Schläfli symbol {3}∨( ).

C3v
C3

[3]
[3]+

*33
33

6
3

Mirrored sphenoid

Two equal scalene triangles with a common base edge

This has two pairs of equal edges (1,3), (1,4) and (2,3), (2,4) and otherwise no edges equal. The only two isometries are 1 and the reflection (34), giving the group Cs, also isomorphic to the cyclic group, Z2.

Cs
=C1h
=C1v

[ ]

*

2

Irregular tetrahedron
(No symmetry)

Four unequal triangles

Its only isometry is the identity, and the symmetry group is the trivial group. An irregular tetrahedron has Schläfli symbol ( )∨( )∨( )∨( ).

It has 8 isometries. If edges (1,2) and (3,4) are of different length to the other 4 then the 8 isometries are the identity 1, reflections (12) and (34), and 180° rotations (12)(34), (13)(24), (14)(23) and improper 90° rotations (1234) and (1432) forming the symmetry group D2d. A tetragonal disphenoid has Coxeter diagram and Schläfli symbol s{2,4}.

It has 4 isometries, the isometries are 1 and the 180° rotations (12)(34), (13)(24), (14)(23). This is the Klein four-groupV4 or Z22, present as the point group D2. A rhombic disphenoid has Coxeter diagram and Schläfli symbol sr{2,2}.

. This gives two opposite edges (1,2) and (3,4) that are perpendicular but different lengths, and then the 4 isometries are 1, reflections (12) and (34) and the 180° rotation (12)(34), the symmetry group is C2v, isomorphic to the Klein four-groupV4. A digonal disphenoid has Schläfli symbol { }∨{ }.

C2vC2

[2]
[2]+

*22
22

4
2

Phyllic disphenoid

Two pairs of equal scalene or isosceles triangles

This has two pairs of equal edges (1,3), (2,4) and (1,4), (2,3) but otherwise no edges equal, the only two isometries are 1 and the rotation (12)(34), giving the group C2 isomorphic to the cyclic group, Z2.

where A0 is the area of the base and h is the height from the base to the apex. This applies for each of the four choices of the base, so the distances from the apexes to the opposite faces are inversely proportional to the areas of these faces.

For a tetrahedron with vertices a = (a1, a2, a3), b = (b1, b2, b3), c = (c1, c2, c3), and d = (d1, d2, d3), the volume is 1/6|det(a − d, b − d, c − d)|, or any other combination of pairs of vertices that form a simply connected graph. This can be rewritten using a dot product and a cross product, yielding

where a, b, and c represent three edges that meet at one vertex, and a · (b × c) is a scalar triple product. Comparing this formula with that used to compute the volume of a parallelepiped, we conclude that the volume of a tetrahedron is equal to 1/6 of the volume of any parallelepiped that shares three converging edges with it.

The absolute value of the scalar triple product can be represented as the following absolute values of determinants:

where α, β, γ are the plane angles occurring in vertex d. The angle α, is the angle between the two edges connecting the vertex d to the vertices b and c. The angle β, does so for the vertices a and c, while γ, is defined by the position of the vertices a and b.

where the subscripts i, j ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4} represent the vertices {a, b, c, d} and dij is the pairwise distance between them – i.e., the length of the edge connecting the two vertices. A negative value of the determinant means that a tetrahedron cannot be constructed with the given distances, this formula, sometimes called Tartaglia's formula, is essentially due to the painter Piero della Francesca in the 15th century, as a three dimensional analogue of the 1st century Heron's formula for the area of a triangle.[8]

A plane that divides two opposite edges of a tetrahedron in a given ratio also divides the volume of the tetrahedron in the same ratio, thus any plane containing a bimedian (connector of opposite edges' midpoints) of a tetrahedron bisects the volume of the tetrahedron[10][11]:pp.89–90

Any two opposite edges of a tetrahedron lie on two skew lines, and the distance between the edges is defined as the distance between the two skew lines. Let d be the distance between the skew lines formed by opposite edges a and b − c as calculated here. Then another volume formula is given by

The tetrahedron has many properties analogous to those of a triangle, including an insphere, circumsphere, medial tetrahedron, and exspheres, it has respective centers such as incenter, circumcenter, excenters, Spieker center and points such as a centroid. However, there is generally no orthocenter in the sense of intersecting altitudes.[13]

Gaspard Monge found a center that exists in every tetrahedron, now known as the Monge point: the point where the six midplanes of a tetrahedron intersect. A midplane is defined as a plane that is orthogonal to an edge joining any two vertices that also contains the centroid of an opposite edge formed by joining the other two vertices. If the tetrahedron's altitudes do intersect, then the Monge point and the orthocenter coincide to give the class of orthocentric tetrahedron.

An orthogonal line dropped from the Monge point to any face meets that face at the midpoint of the line segment between that face's orthocenter and the foot of the altitude dropped from the opposite vertex.

A line segment joining a vertex of a tetrahedron with the centroid of the opposite face is called a median and a line segment joining the midpoints of two opposite edges is called a bimedian of the tetrahedron. Hence there are four medians and three bimedians in a tetrahedron, these seven line segments are all concurrent at a point called the centroid of the tetrahedron.[14] In addition the four medians are divided in a 3:1 ratio by the centroid (see Commandino's theorem), the centroid of a tetrahedron is the midpoint between its Monge point and circumcenter. These points define the Euler line of the tetrahedron that is analogous to the Euler line of a triangle.

The nine-point circle of the general triangle has an analogue in the circumsphere of a tetrahedron's medial tetrahedron, it is the twelve-point sphere and besides the centroids of the four faces of the reference tetrahedron, it passes through four substitute Euler points, one third of the way from the Monge point toward each of the four vertices. Finally it passes through the four base points of orthogonal lines dropped from each Euler point to the face not containing the vertex that generated the Euler point.[15]

The center T of the twelve-point sphere also lies on the Euler line. Unlike its triangular counterpart, this center lies one third of the way from the Monge point M towards the circumcenter. Also, an orthogonal line through T to a chosen face is coplanar with two other orthogonal lines to the same face, the first is an orthogonal line passing through the corresponding Euler point to the chosen face. The second is an orthogonal line passing through the centroid of the chosen face, this orthogonal line through the twelve-point center lies midway between the Euler point orthogonal line and the centroidal orthogonal line. Furthermore, for any face, the twelve-point center lies at the midpoint of the corresponding Euler point and the orthocenter for that face.

The radius of the twelve-point sphere is one third of the circumradius of the reference tetrahedron.

There is a relation among the angles made by the faces of a general tetrahedron given by [16]

A tetrahedron is a 3-simplex. Unlike the case of the other Platonic solids, all the vertices of a regular tetrahedron are equidistant from each other (they are the only possible arrangement of four equidistant points in 3-dimensional space).

A tetrahedron is a triangular pyramid, and the regular tetrahedron is self-dual.

A regular tetrahedron can be embedded inside a cube in two ways such that each vertex is a vertex of the cube, and each edge is a diagonal of one of the cube's faces, for one such embedding, the Cartesian coordinates of the vertices are

(+1, +1, +1);

(−1, −1, +1);

(−1, +1, −1);

(+1, −1, −1).

This yields a tetrahedron with edge-length 2√2, centered at the origin. For the other tetrahedron (which is dual to the first), reverse all the signs, these two tetrahedra's vertices combined are the vertices of a cube, demonstrating that the regular tetrahedron is the 3-demicube.

The interior of the stella octangula is an octahedron, and correspondingly, a regular octahedron is the result of cutting off, from a regular tetrahedron, four regular tetrahedra of half the linear size (i.e., rectifying the tetrahedron).

The above embedding divides the cube into five tetrahedra, one of which is regular; in fact, five is the minimum number of tetrahedra required to compose a cube.

Inscribing tetrahedra inside the regular compound of five cubes gives two more regular compounds, containing five and ten tetrahedra.

Regular tetrahedra cannot tessellate space by themselves, although this result seems likely enough that Aristotle claimed it was possible. However, two regular tetrahedra can be combined with an octahedron, giving a rhombohedron that can tile space.

If one relaxes the requirement that the tetrahedra be all the same shape, one can tile space using only tetrahedra in many different ways, for example, one can divide an octahedron into four identical tetrahedra and combine them again with two regular ones. (As a side-note: these two kinds of tetrahedron have the same volume.)

The tetrahedron is unique among the uniform polyhedra in possessing no parallel faces.

A law of sines for tetrahedra and the space of all shapes of tetrahedra[edit]

One may view the two sides of this identity as corresponding to clockwise and counterclockwise orientations of the surface.

Putting any of the four vertices in the role of O yields four such identities, but at most three of them are independent: If the "clockwise" sides of three of them are multiplied and the product is inferred to be equal to the product of the "counterclockwise" sides of the same three identities, and then common factors are cancelled from both sides, the result is the fourth identity.

Three angles are the angles of some triangle if and only if their sum is 180° (π radians). What condition on 12 angles is necessary and sufficient for them to be the 12 angles of some tetrahedron? Clearly the sum of the angles of any side of the tetrahedron must be 180°. Since there are four such triangles, there are four such constraints on sums of angles, and the number of degrees of freedom is thereby reduced from 12 to 8, the four relations given by this sine law further reduce the number of degrees of freedom, from 8 down to not 4 but 5, since the fourth constraint is not independent of the first three. Thus the space of all shapes of tetrahedra is 5-dimensional.[18]

Let {P1 ,P2, P3, P4} be the points of a tetrahedron. Let Δi be the area of the face opposite vertex Pi and let θij be the dihedral angle between the two faces of the tetrahedron adjacent to the edge PiPj.

The law of cosines for this tetrahedron,[19] which relates the areas of the faces of the tetrahedron to the dihedral angles about a vertex, is given by the following relation:

There exist tetrahedra having integer-valued edge lengths, face areas and volume. One example has one edge of 896, the opposite edge of 990 and the other four edges of 1073; two faces have areas of 7005436800000000000♠436800 and the other two have areas of 7004471200000000000♠47120, while the volume is 7007620928000000000♠62092800.[21]:p.107

A tetrahedron can have integer volume and consecutive integers as edges, an example being the one with edges 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 and volume 48.[21]:p. 107

A truncation process applied to the tetrahedron produces a series of uniform polyhedra. Truncating edges down to points produces the octahedron as a rectified tetrahedron, the process completes as a birectification, reducing the original faces down to points, and producing the self-dual tetrahedron once again.

The tetrahedron shape is seen in nature in covalently bonded molecules. All sp3-hybridized atoms are surrounded by atoms (or lone electron pairs) at the four corners of a tetrahedron. For instance in a methane molecule (CH4) or an ammonium ion (NH+4), four hydrogen atoms surround a central carbon or nitrogen atom with tetrahedral symmetry. For this reason, one of the leading journals in organic chemistry is called Tetrahedron, the central angle between any two vertices of a perfect tetrahedron is arccos(−1/3), or approximately 109.47°.[5][22]

Water, H2O, also has a tetrahedral structure, with two hydrogen atoms and two lone pairs of electrons around the central oxygen atoms. Its tetrahedral symmetry is not perfect, however, because the lone pairs repel more than the single O–H bonds.

Quaternary phase diagrams in chemistry are represented graphically as tetrahedra.

In Season 6, Episode 15 of Futurama, named "Möbius Dick", the Planet Express crew pass through an area in space known as the Bermuda Tetrahedron. Many other ships passing through the area have mysteriously disappeared, including that of the first Planet Express crew.

In the 2013 film Oblivion the large structure in orbit above the Earth is of a tetrahedron design and referred to as the Tet.

At some airfields, a large frame in the shape of a tetrahedron with two sides covered with a thin material is mounted on a rotating pivot and always points into the wind, it is built big enough to be seen from the air and is sometimes illuminated. Its purpose is to serve as a reference to pilots indicating wind direction.[31]

1.
Platonic solid
–
In three-dimensional space, a Platonic solid is a regular, convex polyhedron. It is constructed by congruent regular polygonal faces with the number of faces meeting at each vertex. Five solids meet those criteria, Geometers have studied the mathematical beauty and they are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato who theorized in his dialogue, the Timaeus, that the classical elements were made of these regular solids. The Platonic solids have been known since antiquity, dice go back to the dawn of civilization with shapes that predated formal charting of Platonic solids. The ancient Greeks studied the Platonic solids extensively, some sources credit Pythagoras with their discovery. In any case, Theaetetus gave a description of all five. The Platonic solids are prominent in the philosophy of Plato, their namesake, Plato wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B. C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, there was intuitive justification for these associations, the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing. Air is made of the octahedron, its components are so smooth that one can barely feel it. Water, the icosahedron, flows out of hand when picked up. By contrast, a highly nonspherical solid, the hexahedron represents earth and these clumsy little solids cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up in stark difference to the smooth flow of water. Moreover, the cubes being the regular solid that tessellates Euclidean space was believed to cause the solidity of the Earth. Of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks. the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven. Aristotle added an element, aithēr and postulated that the heavens were made of this element. Euclid completely mathematically described the Platonic solids in the Elements, the last book of which is devoted to their properties, propositions 13–17 in Book XIII describe the construction of the tetrahedron, octahedron, cube, icosahedron, and dodecahedron in that order. For each solid Euclid finds the ratio of the diameter of the sphere to the edge length. In Proposition 18 he argues there are no further convex regular polyhedra. Andreas Speiser has advocated the view that the construction of the 5 regular solids is the goal of the deductive system canonized in the Elements

2.
Euler characteristic
–
It is commonly denoted by χ. The Euler characteristic was originally defined for polyhedra and used to prove theorems about them. Leonhard Euler, for whom the concept is named, was responsible for much of early work. In modern mathematics, the Euler characteristic arises from homology and, more abstractly, any convex polyhedrons surface has Euler characteristic V − E + F =2. This equation is known as Eulers polyhedron formula and it corresponds to the Euler characteristic of the sphere, and applies identically to spherical polyhedra. An illustration of the formula on some polyhedra is given below and this version holds both for convex polyhedra and the non-convex Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra. Projective polyhedra all have Euler characteristic 1, like the real plane, while the surfaces of toroidal polyhedra all have Euler characteristic 0. The Euler characteristic can be defined for connected plane graphs by the same V − E + F formula as for polyhedral surfaces, the Euler characteristic of any plane connected graph G is 2. This is easily proved by induction on the number of determined by G. For trees, E = V −1 and F =1, if G has C components, the same argument by induction on F shows that V − E + F − C =1. One of the few graph theory papers of Cauchy also proves this result, via stereographic projection the plane maps to the two-dimensional sphere, such that a connected graph maps to a polygonal decomposition of the sphere, which has Euler characteristic 2. This viewpoint is implicit in Cauchys proof of Eulers formula given below, there are many proofs of Eulers formula. One was given by Cauchy in 1811, as follows and it applies to any convex polyhedron, and more generally to any polyhedron whose boundary is topologically equivalent to a sphere and whose faces are topologically equivalent to disks. Remove one face of the polyhedral surface, after this deformation, the regular faces are generally not regular anymore. The number of vertices and edges has remained the same, therefore, proving Eulers formula for the polyhedron reduces to proving V − E + F =1 for this deformed, planar object. If there is a face more than three sides, draw a diagonal—that is, a curve through the face connecting two vertices that arent connected yet. This adds one edge and one face and does not change the number of vertices, continue adding edges in this manner until all of the faces are triangular. This decreases the number of edges and faces by one each and does not change the number of vertices, remove a triangle with two edges shared by the exterior of the network, as illustrated by the third graph

3.
Conway polyhedron notation
–
In geometry, Conway polyhedron notation, invented by John Horton Conway and promoted by George W. Hart, is used to describe polyhedra based on a seed polyhedron modified by various prefix operations. Conway and Hart extended the idea of using operators, like truncation defined by Kepler, the basic descriptive operators can generate all the Archimedean solids and Catalan solids from regular seeds. For example tC represents a cube, and taC, parsed as t, is a truncated cuboctahedron. The simplest operator dual swaps vertex and face elements, like a cube is an octahedron. Applied in a series, these allow many higher order polyhedra to be generated. A resulting polyhedron will have a fixed topology, while exact geometry is not constrained, the seed polyhedra are the Platonic solids, represented by the first letter of their name, the prisms for n-gonal forms, antiprisms, cupolae and pyramids. Any polyhedron can serve as a seed, as long as the operations can be executed on it, for example regular-faced Johnson solids can be referenced as Jn, for n=1.92. In general, it is difficult to predict the appearance of the composite of two or more operations from a given seed polyhedron. For instance ambo applied twice becomes the same as the operation, aa=e, while a truncation after ambo produces bevel. There has been no general theory describing what polyhedra can be generated in by any set of operators, instead all results have been discovered empirically. Elements are given from the seed to the new forms, assuming seed is a polyhedron, An example image is given for each operation. The basic operations are sufficient to generate the reflective uniform polyhedra, some basic operations can be made as composites of others. Special forms The kis operator has a variation, kn, which only adds pyramids to n-sided faces, the truncate operator has a variation, tn, which only truncates order-n vertices. The operators are applied like functions from right to left, for example, a cuboctahedron is an ambo cube, i. e. t = aC, and a truncated cuboctahedron is t = t = taC. Chirality operator r – reflect – makes the image of the seed. Alternately an overline can be used for picking the other chiral form, the operations are visualized here on cube seed examples, drawn on the surface of the cube, with blue faces that cross original edges, and pink faces that center at original vertices. The first row generates the Archimedean solids and the row the Catalan solids. Comparing each new polyhedron with the cube, each operation can be visually understood, the truncated icosahedron, tI or zD, which is Goldberg polyhedron G, creates more polyhedra which are neither vertex nor face-transitive

4.
Face configuration
–
In geometry, a vertex configuration is a shorthand notation for representing the vertex figure of a polyhedron or tiling as the sequence of faces around a vertex. For uniform polyhedra there is one vertex type and therefore the vertex configuration fully defines the polyhedron. A vertex configuration is given as a sequence of numbers representing the number of sides of the faces going around the vertex, the notation a. b. c describes a vertex that has 3 faces around it, faces with a, b, and c sides. For example,3.5.3.5 indicates a vertex belonging to 4 faces, alternating triangles and this vertex configuration defines the vertex-transitive icosidodecahedron. The notation is cyclic and therefore is equivalent with different starting points, the order is important, so 3.3.5.5 is different from 3.5.3.5. Repeated elements can be collected as exponents so this example is represented as 2. It has variously called a vertex description, vertex type, vertex symbol, vertex arrangement, vertex pattern. It is also called a Cundy and Rollett symbol for its usage for the Archimedean solids in their 1952 book Mathematical Models, a vertex configuration can also be represented as a polygonal vertex figure showing the faces around the vertex. Different notations are used, sometimes with a comma and sometimes a period separator, the period operator is useful because it looks like a product and an exponent notation can be used. For example,3.5.3.5 is sometimes written as 2, the notation can also be considered an expansive form of the simple Schläfli symbol for regular polyhedra. The Schläfli notation means q p-gons around each vertex, so can be written as p. p. p. or pq. For example, an icosahedron is =3.3.3.3.3 or 35 and this notation applies to polygonal tilings as well as polyhedra. A planar vertex configuration denotes a uniform tiling just like a nonplanar vertex configuration denotes a uniform polyhedron, the notation is ambiguous for chiral forms. For example, the cube has clockwise and counterclockwise forms which are identical across mirror images. Both have a 3.3.3.3.4 vertex configuration, the notation also applies for nonconvex regular faces, the star polygons. For example, a pentagram has the symbol, meaning it has 5 sides going around the centre twice, for example, there are 4 regular star polyhedra with regular polygon or star polygon vertex figures. The small stellated dodecahedron has the Schläfli symbol of which expands to a vertex configuration 5/2. 5/2. 5/2. 5/2. 5/2 or combined as 5. The great stellated dodecahedron, has a vertex figure and configuration or 3

5.
Wythoff symbol
–
In geometry, the Wythoff symbol represents a Wythoff construction of a uniform polyhedron or plane tiling, from a Schwarz triangle. It was first used by Coxeter, Longuet-Higgins and Miller in their enumeration of the uniform polyhedra, a Wythoff symbol consists of three numbers and a vertical bar. It represents one uniform polyhedron or tiling, although the same tiling/polyhedron can have different Wythoff symbols from different symmetry generators, with a slight extension, Wythoffs symbol can be applied to all uniform polyhedra. However, the methods do not lead to all uniform tilings in euclidean or hyperbolic space. In three dimensions, Wythoffs construction begins by choosing a point on the triangle. If the distance of this point from each of the sides is non-zero, a perpendicular line is then dropped between the generator point and every face that it does not lie on. The three numbers in Wythoffs symbol, p, q and r, represent the corners of the Schwarz triangle used in the construction, the triangle is also represented with the same numbers, written. In this notation the mirrors are labeled by the reflection-order of the opposite vertex, the p, q, r values are listed before the bar if the corresponding mirror is active. The one impossible symbol | p q r implies the point is on all mirrors. This unused symbol is therefore arbitrarily reassigned to represent the case where all mirrors are active, the resulting figure has rotational symmetry only. The generator point can either be on or off each mirror and this distinction creates 8 possible forms, neglecting one where the generator point is on all the mirrors. A node is circled if the point is not on the mirror. There are seven generator points with each set of p, q, r, | p q r – Snub forms are given by this otherwise unused symbol. | p q r s – A unique snub form for U75 that isnt Wythoff-constructible, There are 4 symmetry classes of reflection on the sphere, and two in the Euclidean plane. A few of the many such patterns in the hyperbolic plane are also listed. The list of Schwarz triangles includes rational numbers, and determine the set of solutions of nonconvex uniform polyhedra. In the tilings above, each triangle is a domain, colored by even. Selected tilings created by the Wythoff construction are given below, for a more complete list, including cases where r ≠2, see List of uniform polyhedra by Schwarz triangle

6.
Tetrahedral symmetry
–
A regular tetrahedron has 12 rotational symmetries, and a symmetry order of 24 including transformations that combine a reflection and a rotation. The set of orientation-preserving symmetries forms a group referred to as the alternating subgroup A4 of S4, chiral and full are discrete point symmetries. They are among the point groups of the cubic crystal system. Seen in stereographic projection the edges of the tetrakis hexahedron form 6 circles in the plane, each of these 6 circles represent a mirror line in tetrahedral symmetry. The intersection of these meet at order 2 and 3 gyration points. T,332, +, or 23, of order 12 – chiral or rotational tetrahedral symmetry, there are three orthogonal 2-fold rotation axes, like chiral dihedral symmetry D2 or 222, with in addition four 3-fold axes, centered between the three orthogonal directions. This group is isomorphic to A4, the group on 4 elements, in fact it is the group of even permutations of the four 3-fold axes. The three elements of the latter are the identity, clockwise rotation, and anti-clockwise rotation, corresponding to permutations of the three orthogonal 2-fold axes, preserving orientation. Td, *332, or 43m, of order 24 – achiral or full tetrahedral symmetry and this group has the same rotation axes as T, but with six mirror planes, each through two 3-fold axes. The 2-fold axes are now S4 axes, td and O are isomorphic as abstract groups, they both correspond to S4, the symmetric group on 4 objects. Td is the union of T and the set obtained by combining each element of O \ T with inversion, see also the isometries of the regular tetrahedron. This group has the same axes as T, with mirror planes through two of the orthogonal directions. The 3-fold axes are now S6 axes, and there is an inversion symmetry. Th is isomorphic to T × Z2, every element of Th is either an element of T, apart from these two normal subgroups, there is also a normal subgroup D2h, of type Dih2 × Z2 = Z2 × Z2 × Z2. It is the product of the normal subgroup of T with Ci. The quotient group is the same as above, of type Z3, the three elements of the latter are the identity, clockwise rotation, and anti-clockwise rotation, corresponding to permutations of the three orthogonal 2-fold axes, preserving orientation. It is the symmetry of a cube with on each face a line segment dividing the face into two rectangles, such that the line segments of adjacent faces do not meet at the edge. The symmetries correspond to the permutations of the body diagonals

7.
Point groups in three dimensions
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In geometry, a point group in three dimensions is an isometry group in three dimensions that leaves the origin fixed, or correspondingly, an isometry group of a sphere. It is a subgroup of the orthogonal group O, the group of all isometries that leave the origin fixed, or correspondingly, O itself is a subgroup of the Euclidean group E of all isometries. Symmetry groups of objects are isometry groups, accordingly, analysis of isometry groups is analysis of possible symmetries. All isometries of a bounded 3D object have one or more fixed points. We choose the origin as one of them, the rotation group of an object is equal to its full symmetry group if and only if the object is chiral. Finite Coxeter groups are a set of point groups generated purely by a set of reflectional mirrors passing through the same point. A rank n Coxeter group has n mirrors and is represented by a Coxeter–Dynkin diagram, Coxeter notation offers a bracketed notation equivalent to the Coxeter diagram, with markup symbols for rotational and other subsymmetry point groups. SO is a subgroup of E+, which consists of direct isometries, i. e. isometries preserving orientation, it contains those that leave the origin fixed. O is the product of SO and the group generated by inversion. An example would be C4 for H and S4 for M, Thus M is obtained from H by inverting the isometries in H ∖ L. This is clarifying when categorizing isometry groups, see below, in 2D the cyclic group of k-fold rotations Ck is for every positive integer k a normal subgroup of O and SO. Accordingly, in 3D, for every axis the cyclic group of rotations about that axis is a normal subgroup of the group of all rotations about that axis. e. See also the similar overview including translations, when comparing the symmetry type of two objects, the origin is chosen for each separately, i. e. they need not have the same center. Moreover, two objects are considered to be of the symmetry type if their symmetry groups are conjugate subgroups of O. The conjugacy definition would allow a mirror image of the structure, but this is not needed. For example, if a symmetry group contains a 3-fold axis of rotation, there are many infinite isometry groups, for example, the cyclic group generated by a rotation by an irrational number of turns about an axis. We may create non-cyclical abelian groups by adding more rotations around the same axis, there are also non-abelian groups generated by rotations around different axes. They will be infinite unless the rotations are specially chosen, all the infinite groups mentioned so far are not closed as topological subgroups of O

8.
Uniform polyhedron
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A uniform polyhedron is a polyhedron which has regular polygons as faces and is vertex-transitive. It follows that all vertices are congruent, Uniform polyhedra may be regular, quasi-regular or semi-regular. The faces and vertices need not be convex, so many of the uniform polyhedra are also star polyhedra, there are two infinite classes of uniform polyhedra together with 75 others. Dual polyhedra to uniform polyhedra are face-transitive and have regular vertex figures, the dual of a regular polyhedron is regular, while the dual of an Archimedean solid is a Catalan solid. The concept of uniform polyhedron is a case of the concept of uniform polytope. Coxeter, Longuet-Higgins & Miller define uniform polyhedra to be vertex-transitive polyhedra with regular faces, by a polygon they implicitly mean a polygon in 3-dimensional Euclidean space, these are allowed to be non-convex and to intersect each other. There are some generalizations of the concept of a uniform polyhedron, if the connectedness assumption is dropped, then we get uniform compounds, which can be split as a union of polyhedra, such as the compound of 5 cubes. If we drop the condition that the realization of the polyhedron is non-degenerate and these require a more general definition of polyhedra. Some of the ways they can be degenerate are as follows, some polyhedra have faces that are hidden, in the sense that no points of their interior can be seen from the outside. These are usually not counted as uniform polyhedra, some polyhedra have multiple edges and their faces are the faces of two or more polyhedra, though these are not compounds in the previous sense since the polyhedra share edges. There are some non-orientable polyhedra that have double covers satisfying the definition of a uniform polyhedron, there double covers have doubled faces, edges and vertices. They are usually not counted as uniform polyhedra, there are several polyhedra with doubled faces produced by Wythoffs construction. Most authors do not allow doubled faces and remove them as part of the construction, skillings figure has the property that it has double edges but its faces cannot be written as a union of two uniform polyhedra. Regular convex polyhedra, The Platonic solids date back to the classical Greeks and were studied by the Pythagoreans, Plato, Theaetetus, Timaeus of Locri, the Etruscans discovered the regular dodecahedron before 500 BC. Nonregular uniform convex polyhedra, The cuboctahedron was known by Plato, Archimedes discovered all of the 13 Archimedean solids. His original book on the subject was lost, but Pappus of Alexandria mentioned Archimedes listed 13 polyhedra, piero della Francesca rediscovered the five truncation of the Platonic solids, truncated tetrahedron, truncated octahedron, truncated cube, truncated dodecahedron, and truncated icosahedron. Luca Pacioli republished Francescas work in De divina proportione in 1509, adding the rhombicuboctahedron, calling it a icosihexahedron for its 26 faces, which was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci. Johannes Kepler was the first to publish the complete list of Archimedean solids, in 1619, regular star polyhedra, Kepler discovered two of the regular Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra and Louis Poinsot discovered the other two

9.
Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter
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Harold Scott MacDonald Donald Coxeter, FRS, FRSC, CC was a British-born Canadian geometer. Coxeter is regarded as one of the greatest geometers of the 20th century and he was born in London but spent most of his adult life in Canada. He was always called Donald, from his third name MacDonald, in his youth, Coxeter composed music and was an accomplished pianist at the age of 10. He felt that mathematics and music were intimately related, outlining his ideas in a 1962 article on Mathematics and he worked for 60 years at the University of Toronto and published twelve books. He was most noted for his work on regular polytopes and higher-dimensional geometries and he was a champion of the classical approach to geometry, in a period when the tendency was to approach geometry more and more via algebra. Coxeter went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1926 to read mathematics, there he earned his BA in 1928, and his doctorate in 1931. In 1932 he went to Princeton University for a year as a Rockefeller Fellow, where he worked with Hermann Weyl, Oswald Veblen, returning to Trinity for a year, he attended Ludwig Wittgensteins seminars on the philosophy of mathematics. In 1934 he spent a year at Princeton as a Procter Fellow. In 1936 Coxeter moved to the University of Toronto, flather, and John Flinders Petrie published The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra with University of Toronto Press. In 1940 Coxeter edited the eleventh edition of Mathematical Recreations and Essays and he was elevated to professor in 1948. Coxeter was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1948 and he also inspired some of the innovations of Buckminster Fuller. Coxeter, M. S. Longuet-Higgins and J. C. P. Miller were the first to publish the full list of uniform polyhedra, since 1978, the Canadian Mathematical Society have awarded the Coxeter–James Prize in his honor. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1950, in 1990, he became a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1997 was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1973 he got the Jeffery–Williams Prize,1940, Regular and Semi-Regular Polytopes I, Mathematische Zeitschrift 46, 380-407, MR2,10 doi,10. 1007/BF011814491942, Non-Euclidean Geometry, University of Toronto Press, MAA. 1954, Uniform Polyhedra, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A246, arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson and Asia Ivić Weiss, editors, Kaleidoscopes — Selected Writings of H. S. M. John Wiley and Sons ISBN 0-471-01003-01999, The Beauty of Geometry, Twelve Essays, Dover Publications, LCCN 99-35678, ISBN 0-486-40919-8 Davis, Chandler, Ellers, Erich W, the Coxeter Legacy, Reflections and Projections. King of Infinite Space, Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry, www. donaldcoxeter. com www. math. yorku. ca/dcoxeter webpages dedicated to him Jarons World, Shapes in Other Dimensions, Discover mag. Apr 2007 The Mathematics in the Art of M. C, escher video of a lecture by H. S. M

10.
Regular polyhedron
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A regular polyhedron is a polyhedron whose symmetry group acts transitively on its flags. A regular polyhedron is highly symmetrical, being all of edge-transitive, vertex-transitive and face-transitive, in classical contexts, many different equivalent definitions are used, a common one is that faces are congruent regular polygons which are assembled in the same way around each vertex. A regular polyhedron is identified by its Schläfli symbol of the form, there are 5 finite convex regular polyhedra, known as the Platonic solids. These are the, tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron, there are also four regular star polyhedra, making nine regular polyhedra in all. All the dihedral angles of the polyhedron are equal All the vertex figures of the polyhedron are regular polygons, All the solid angles of the polyhedron are congruent. A regular polyhedron has all of three related spheres which share its centre, An insphere, tangent to all faces, an intersphere or midsphere, tangent to all edges. A circumsphere, tangent to all vertices, the regular polyhedra are the most symmetrical of all the polyhedra. They lie in just three symmetry groups, which are named after them, Tetrahedral Octahedral Icosahedral Any shapes with icosahedral or octahedral symmetry will also contain tetrahedral symmetry, the five Platonic solids have an Euler characteristic of 2. Some of the stars have a different value. The sum of the distances from any point in the interior of a polyhedron to the sides is independent of the location of the point. However, the converse does not hold, not even for tetrahedra, in a dual pair of polyhedra, the vertices of one polyhedron correspond to the faces of the other, and vice versa. The regular polyhedra show this duality as follows, The tetrahedron is self-dual, the cube and octahedron are dual to each other. The icosahedron and dodecahedron are dual to each other, the small stellated dodecahedron and great dodecahedron are dual to each other. The great stellated dodecahedron and great icosahedron are dual to each other, the Schläfli symbol of the dual is just the original written backwards, for example the dual of is. See also Regular polytope, History of discovery, stones carved in shapes resembling clusters of spheres or knobs have been found in Scotland and may be as much as 4,000 years old. Some of these stones show not only the symmetries of the five Platonic solids, examples of these stones are on display in the John Evans room of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University. Why these objects were made, or how their creators gained the inspiration for them, is a mystery, the earliest known written records of the regular convex solids originated from Classical Greece. When these solids were all discovered and by whom is not known, euclids reference to Plato led to their common description as the Platonic solids

11.
Convex polyhedron
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A convex polytope is a special case of a polytope, having the additional property that it is also a convex set of points in the n-dimensional space Rn. Some authors use the terms polytope and convex polyhedron interchangeably. In addition, some require a polytope to be a bounded set. The terms bounded/unbounded convex polytope will be used whenever the boundedness is critical to the discussed issue. Yet other texts treat a convex n-polytope as a surface or -manifold, Convex polytopes play an important role both in various branches of mathematics and in applied areas, most notably in linear programming. A comprehensive and influential book in the subject, called Convex Polytopes, was published in 1967 by Branko Grünbaum, in 2003 the 2nd edition of the book was published, with significant additional material contributed by new writers. In Grünbaums book, and in other texts in discrete geometry. Grünbaum points out that this is solely to avoid the repetition of the word convex. A polytope is called if it is an n-dimensional object in Rn. Many examples of bounded convex polytopes can be found in the article polyhedron, a convex polytope may be defined in a number of ways, depending on what is more suitable for the problem at hand. Grünbaums definition is in terms of a set of points in space. Other important definitions are, as the intersection of half-spaces and as the hull of a set of points. This is equivalent to defining a bounded convex polytope as the hull of a finite set of points. Such a definition is called a vertex representation, for a compact convex polytope, the minimal V-description is unique and it is given by the set of the vertices of the polytope. A convex polytope may be defined as an intersection of a number of half-spaces. Such definition is called a half-space representation, there exist infinitely many H-descriptions of a convex polytope. However, for a convex polytope, the minimal H-description is in fact unique and is given by the set of the facet-defining halfspaces. A closed half-space can be written as an inequality, a 1 x 1 + a 2 x 2 + ⋯ + a n x n ≤ b where n is the dimension of the space containing the polytope under consideration

12.
Deltahedron
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In geometry, a deltahedron is a polyhedron whose faces are all equilateral triangles. The name is taken from the Greek majuscule delta, which has the shape of an equilateral triangle, There are infinitely many deltahedra, but of these only eight are convex, having 4,6,8,10,12,14,16 and 20 faces. The number of faces, edges, and vertices is listed below for each of the eight convex deltahedra, There are only eight strictly-convex deltahedra, three are regular polyhedra, and five are Johnson solids. In the 6-faced deltahedron, some vertices have degree 3 and some degree 4, in the 10-, 12-, 14-, and 16-faced deltahedra, some vertices have degree 4 and some degree 5. These five irregular deltahedra belong to the class of Johnson solids, Deltahedra retain their shape, even if the edges are free to rotate around their vertices so that the angles between edges are fluid. Not all polyhedra have this property, for example, if you relax some of the angles of a cube, There is no 18-faced convex deltahedron. There are infinitely many cases with coplanar triangles, allowing for sections of the infinite triangular tilings, if the sets of coplanar triangles are considered a single face, a smaller set of faces, edges, and vertices can be counted. The coplanar triangular faces can be merged into rhombic, trapezoidal, hexagonal, each face must be a convex polyiamond such as, and. Some smaller examples include, There are a number of nonconvex forms. Konvexe pseudoreguläre Polyeder, Zeitschrift für mathematischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht,46, cundy, H. Martyn, Deltahedra, Mathematical Gazette,36, 263–266. Cundy, H. Martyn, Rollett, A.3.11, Deltahedra, Mathematical Models, Stradbroke, England, Tarquin Pub. pp. 142–144. Gardner, Martin, Fractal Music, Hypercards, and More, Mathematical Recreations from Scientific American, New York, W. H. Freeman, pp.40,53, and 58–60. Pugh, Anthony, Polyhedra, A visual approach, California, University of California Press Berkeley, ISBN 0-520-03056-7 pp. 35–36 Weisstein, the eight convex deltahedra Deltahedron Deltahedron

13.
Dihedral angle
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A dihedral angle is the angle between two intersecting planes. In chemistry it is the angle between planes through two sets of three atoms, having two atoms in common, in solid geometry it is defined as the union of a line and two half-planes that have this line as a common edge. In higher dimension, a dihedral angle represents the angle between two hyperplanes, a dihedral angle is an angle between two intersecting planes on a third plane perpendicular to the line of intersection. A torsion angle is an example of a dihedral angle. In stereochemistry every set of three atoms of a molecule defines a plane, when two such planes intersect, the angle between them is a dihedral angle. Dihedral angles are used to specify the molecular conformation, stereochemical arrangements corresponding to angles between 0° and ±90° are called syn, those corresponding to angles between ±90° and 180° anti. Similarly, arrangements corresponding to angles between 30° and 150° or between −30° and −150° are called clinal and those between 0° and ±30° or ±150° and 180° are called periplanar. The synperiplanar conformation is also known as the syn- or cis-conformation, antiperiplanar as anti or trans, for example, with n-butane two planes can be specified in terms of the two central carbon atoms and either of the methyl carbon atoms. The syn-conformation shown above, with an angle of 60° is less stable than the anti-configuration with a dihedral angle of 180°. For macromolecular usage the symbols T, C, G+, G−, A+, a Ramachandran plot, originally developed in 1963 by G. N. Ramachandran, C. Ramakrishnan, and V. Sasisekharan, is a way to visualize energetically allowed regions for backbone dihedral angles ψ against φ of amino acid residues in protein structure, the figure at right illustrates the definition of the φ and ψ backbone dihedral angles. In a protein chain three dihedral angles are defined as φ, ψ and ω, as shown in the diagram, the planarity of the peptide bond usually restricts ω to be 180° or 0°. The distance between the Cα atoms in the trans and cis isomers is approximately 3.8 and 2.9 Å, the cis isomer is mainly observed in Xaa–Pro peptide bonds. The sidechain dihedral angles tend to cluster near 180°, 60°, and −60°, which are called the trans, gauche+, the stability of certain sidechain dihedral angles is affected by the values φ and ψ. For instance, there are steric interactions between the Cγ of the side chain in the gauche+ rotamer and the backbone nitrogen of the next residue when ψ is near -60°. An alternative method is to calculate the angle between the vectors, nA and nB, which are normal to the planes. Cos ⁡ φ = − n A ⋅ n B | n A | | n B | where nA · nB is the dot product of the vectors and |nA| |nB| is the product of their lengths. Any plane can also be described by two non-collinear vectors lying in that plane, taking their cross product yields a vector to the plane

14.
Vertex figure
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In geometry, a vertex figure, broadly speaking, is the figure exposed when a corner of a polyhedron or polytope is sliced off. Take some vertex of a polyhedron, mark a point somewhere along each connected edge. Draw lines across the faces, joining adjacent points. When done, these form a complete circuit, i. e. a polygon. This polygon is the vertex figure, more precise formal definitions can vary quite widely, according to circumstance. For example Coxeter varies his definition as convenient for the current area of discussion, most of the following definitions of a vertex figure apply equally well to infinite tilings, or space-filling tessellation with polytope cells. Make a slice through the corner of the polyhedron, cutting all the edges connected to the vertex. The cut surface is the vertex figure and this is perhaps the most common approach, and the most easily understood. Different authors make the slice in different places, Wenninger cuts each edge a unit distance from the vertex, as does Coxeter. For uniform polyhedra the Dorman Luke construction cuts each connected edge at its midpoint, other authors make the cut through the vertex at the other end of each edge. For irregular polyhedra, these approaches may produce a figure that does not lie in a plane. A more general approach, valid for convex polyhedra, is to make the cut along any plane which separates the given vertex from all the other vertices. Cromwell makes a cut or scoop, centered on the vertex. The cut surface or vertex figure is thus a spherical polygon marked on this sphere, many combinatorial and computational approaches treat a vertex figure as the ordered set of points of all the neighboring vertices to the given vertex. In the theory of polytopes, the vertex figure at a given vertex V comprises all the elements which are incident on the vertex, edges, faces. More formally it is the -section Fn/V, where Fn is the greatest face and this set of elements is elsewhere known as a vertex star. A vertex figure for an n-polytope is an -polytope, for example, a vertex figure for a polyhedron is a polygon figure, and the vertex figure for a 4-polytope is a polyhedron. Each edge of the vertex figure exists on or inside of a face of the original polytope connecting two vertices from an original face

15.
Self-dual
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Such involutions sometimes have fixed points, so that the dual of A is A itself. For example, Desargues theorem is self-dual in this sense under the standard duality in projective geometry, many mathematical dualities between objects of two types correspond to pairings, bilinear functions from an object of one type and another object of the second type to some family of scalars. From a category theory viewpoint, duality can also be seen as a functor and this functor assigns to each space its dual space, and the pullback construction assigns to each arrow f, V → W its dual f∗, W∗ → V∗. In the words of Michael Atiyah, Duality in mathematics is not a theorem, the following list of examples shows the common features of many dualities, but also indicates that the precise meaning of duality may vary from case to case. A simple, maybe the most simple, duality arises from considering subsets of a fixed set S, to any subset A ⊆ S, the complement Ac consists of all those elements in S which are not contained in A. It is again a subset of S, taking the complement has the following properties, Applying it twice gives back the original set, i. e. c = A. This is referred to by saying that the operation of taking the complement is an involution, an inclusion of sets A ⊆ B is turned into an inclusion in the opposite direction Bc ⊆ Ac. Given two subsets A and B of S, A is contained in Bc if and only if B is contained in Ac. This duality appears in topology as a duality between open and closed subsets of some fixed topological space X, a subset U of X is closed if, because of this, many theorems about closed sets are dual to theorems about open sets. For example, any union of sets is open, so dually. The interior of a set is the largest open set contained in it, because of the duality, the complement of the interior of any set U is equal to the closure of the complement of U. A duality in geometry is provided by the cone construction. Given a set C of points in the plane R2, unlike for the complement of sets mentioned above, it is not in general true that applying the dual cone construction twice gives back the original set C. Instead, C ∗ ∗ is the smallest cone containing C which may be bigger than C. Therefore this duality is weaker than the one above, in that Applying the operation twice gives back a possibly bigger set, the other two properties carry over without change, It is still true that an inclusion C ⊆ D is turned into an inclusion in the opposite direction. Given two subsets C and D of the plane, C is contained in D ∗ if, a very important example of a duality arises in linear algebra by associating to any vector space V its dual vector space V*. Its elements are the k-linear maps φ, V → k, the three properties of the dual cone carry over to this type of duality by replacing subsets of R2 by vector space and inclusions of such subsets by linear maps. That is, Applying the operation of taking the dual vector space twice gives another vector space V**, there is always a map V → V**

16.
Dual polyhedron
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Such dual figures remain combinatorial or abstract polyhedra, but not all are also geometric polyhedra. Starting with any given polyhedron, the dual of its dual is the original polyhedron, duality preserves the symmetries of a polyhedron. Therefore, for classes of polyhedra defined by their symmetries. Thus, the regular polyhedra – the Platonic solids and Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra – form dual pairs, the dual of an isogonal polyhedron, having equivalent vertices, is one which is isohedral, having equivalent faces. The dual of a polyhedron is also isotoxal. Duality is closely related to reciprocity or polarity, a transformation that. There are many kinds of duality, the kinds most relevant to elementary polyhedra are polar reciprocity and topological or abstract duality. The duality of polyhedra is often defined in terms of polar reciprocation about a concentric sphere. In coordinates, for reciprocation about the sphere x 2 + y 2 + z 2 = r 2, the vertex is associated with the plane x 0 x + y 0 y + z 0 z = r 2. The vertices of the dual are the reciprocal to the face planes of the original. Also, any two adjacent vertices define an edge, and these will reciprocate to two adjacent faces which intersect to define an edge of the dual and this dual pair of edges are always orthogonal to each other. If r 0 is the radius of the sphere, and r 1 and r 2 respectively the distances from its centre to the pole and its polar, then, r 1. R2 = r 02 For the more symmetrical polyhedra having an obvious centroid, it is common to make the polyhedron and sphere concentric, the choice of center for the sphere is sufficient to define the dual up to similarity. If multiple symmetry axes are present, they will intersect at a single point. Failing that, a sphere, inscribed sphere, or midsphere is commonly used. If a polyhedron in Euclidean space has an element passing through the center of the sphere, since Euclidean space never reaches infinity, the projective equivalent, called extended Euclidean space, may be formed by adding the required plane at infinity. Some theorists prefer to stick to Euclidean space and say there is no dual. Meanwhile, Wenninger found a way to represent these infinite duals, the concept of duality here is closely related to the duality in projective geometry, where lines and edges are interchanged

17.
Net (polyhedron)
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In geometry the net of a polyhedron is an arrangement of edge-joined polygons in the plane which can be folded to become the faces of the polyhedron. Polyhedral nets are an aid to the study of polyhedra and solid geometry in general. Many different nets can exist for a polyhedron, depending on the choices of which edges are joined. Conversely, a given net may fold into more than one different convex polyhedron, depending on the angles at which its edges are folded, additionally, the same net may have multiple valid gluing patterns, leading to different folded polyhedra. Shephard asked whether every convex polyhedron has at least one net and this question, which is also known as Dürers conjecture, or Dürers unfolding problem, remains unanswered. There exist non-convex polyhedra that do not have nets, and it is possible to subdivide the faces of every convex polyhedron so that the set of subdivided faces has a net, in 2014 Mohammad Ghomi showed that every convex polyhedron admits a net after an affine transformation. The shortest path over the surface between two points on the surface of a polyhedron corresponds to a line on a suitable net for the subset of faces touched by the path. The net has to be such that the line is fully within it. Other candidates for the shortest path are through the surface of a third face adjacent to both, and corresponding nets can be used to find the shortest path in each category, the geometric concept of a net can be extended to higher dimensions. The above net of the tesseract, the hypercube, is used prominently in a painting by Salvador Dalí. However, it is known to be possible for every convex uniform 4-polytope, Paper model Cardboard modeling UV mapping Weisstein, Eric W. Net. Regular 4d Polytope Foldouts Editable Printable Polyhedral Nets with an Interactive 3D View Paper Models of Polyhedra Unfolder for Blender Unfolding package for Mathematica

18.
Geometry
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Geometry is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer, Geometry arose independently in a number of early cultures as a practical way for dealing with lengths, areas, and volumes. Geometry began to see elements of mathematical science emerging in the West as early as the 6th century BC. By the 3rd century BC, geometry was put into a form by Euclid, whose treatment, Euclids Elements. Geometry arose independently in India, with texts providing rules for geometric constructions appearing as early as the 3rd century BC, islamic scientists preserved Greek ideas and expanded on them during the Middle Ages. By the early 17th century, geometry had been put on a solid footing by mathematicians such as René Descartes. Since then, and into modern times, geometry has expanded into non-Euclidean geometry and manifolds, while geometry has evolved significantly throughout the years, there are some general concepts that are more or less fundamental to geometry. These include the concepts of points, lines, planes, surfaces, angles, contemporary geometry has many subfields, Euclidean geometry is geometry in its classical sense. The mandatory educational curriculum of the majority of nations includes the study of points, lines, planes, angles, triangles, congruence, similarity, solid figures, circles, Euclidean geometry also has applications in computer science, crystallography, and various branches of modern mathematics. Differential geometry uses techniques of calculus and linear algebra to problems in geometry. It has applications in physics, including in general relativity, topology is the field concerned with the properties of geometric objects that are unchanged by continuous mappings. In practice, this often means dealing with large-scale properties of spaces, convex geometry investigates convex shapes in the Euclidean space and its more abstract analogues, often using techniques of real analysis. It has close connections to convex analysis, optimization and functional analysis, algebraic geometry studies geometry through the use of multivariate polynomials and other algebraic techniques. It has applications in areas, including cryptography and string theory. Discrete geometry is concerned mainly with questions of relative position of simple objects, such as points. It shares many methods and principles with combinatorics, Geometry has applications to many fields, including art, architecture, physics, as well as to other branches of mathematics. The earliest recorded beginnings of geometry can be traced to ancient Mesopotamia, the earliest known texts on geometry are the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus and Moscow Papyrus, the Babylonian clay tablets such as Plimpton 322. For example, the Moscow Papyrus gives a formula for calculating the volume of a truncated pyramid, later clay tablets demonstrate that Babylonian astronomers implemented trapezoid procedures for computing Jupiters position and motion within time-velocity space

19.
Polyhedron
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In geometry, a polyhedron is a solid in three dimensions with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices. The word polyhedron comes from the Classical Greek πολύεδρον, as poly- + -hedron, a convex polyhedron is the convex hull of finitely many points, not all on the same plane. Cubes and pyramids are examples of convex polyhedra, a polyhedron is a 3-dimensional example of the more general polytope in any number of dimensions. Convex polyhedra are well-defined, with several equivalent standard definitions, however, the formal mathematical definition of polyhedra that are not required to be convex has been problematic. Many definitions of polyhedron have been given within particular contexts, some more rigorous than others, some of these definitions exclude shapes that have often been counted as polyhedra or include shapes that are often not considered as valid polyhedra. As Branko Grünbaum observed, The Original Sin in the theory of polyhedra goes back to Euclid, the writers failed to define what are the polyhedra. Nevertheless, there is agreement that a polyhedron is a solid or surface that can be described by its vertices, edges, faces. Natural refinements of this definition require the solid to be bounded, to have a connected interior, and possibly also to have a connected boundary. However, the polyhedra defined in this way do not include the self-crossing star polyhedra, their faces may not form simple polygons, definitions based on the idea of a bounding surface rather than a solid are also common. If a planar part of such a surface is not itself a convex polygon, ORourke requires it to be subdivided into smaller convex polygons, cromwell gives a similar definition but without the restriction of three edges per vertex. Again, this type of definition does not encompass the self-crossing polyhedra, however, there exist topological polyhedra that cannot be realized as acoptic polyhedra. One modern approach is based on the theory of abstract polyhedra and these can be defined as partially ordered sets whose elements are the vertices, edges, and faces of a polyhedron. A vertex or edge element is less than an edge or face element when the vertex or edge is part of the edge or face, additionally, one may include a special bottom element of this partial order and a top element representing the whole polyhedron. However, these requirements are relaxed, to instead require only that the sections between elements two levels apart from line segments. Geometric polyhedra, defined in other ways, can be described abstractly in this way, a realization of an abstract polyhedron is generally taken to be a mapping from the vertices of the abstract polyhedron to geometric points, such that the points of each face are coplanar. A geometric polyhedron can then be defined as a realization of an abstract polyhedron, realizations that forgo the requirement of planarity, that impose additional requirements of symmetry, or that map the vertices to higher dimensional spaces have also been considered. Unlike the solid-based and surface-based definitions, this perfectly well for star polyhedra. However, without restrictions, this definition allows degenerate or unfaithful polyhedra

20.
Triangle
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A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted △ A B C, in Euclidean geometry any three points, when non-collinear, determine a unique triangle and a unique plane. This article is about triangles in Euclidean geometry except where otherwise noted, triangles can be classified according to the lengths of their sides, An equilateral triangle has all sides the same length. An equilateral triangle is also a polygon with all angles measuring 60°. An isosceles triangle has two sides of equal length, some mathematicians define an isosceles triangle to have exactly two equal sides, whereas others define an isosceles triangle as one with at least two equal sides. The latter definition would make all equilateral triangles isosceles triangles, the 45–45–90 right triangle, which appears in the tetrakis square tiling, is isosceles. A scalene triangle has all its sides of different lengths, equivalently, it has all angles of different measure. Hatch marks, also called tick marks, are used in diagrams of triangles, a side can be marked with a pattern of ticks, short line segments in the form of tally marks, two sides have equal lengths if they are both marked with the same pattern. In a triangle, the pattern is no more than 3 ticks. Similarly, patterns of 1,2, or 3 concentric arcs inside the angles are used to indicate equal angles, triangles can also be classified according to their internal angles, measured here in degrees. A right triangle has one of its interior angles measuring 90°, the side opposite to the right angle is the hypotenuse, the longest side of the triangle. The other two sides are called the legs or catheti of the triangle, special right triangles are right triangles with additional properties that make calculations involving them easier. One of the two most famous is the 3–4–5 right triangle, where 32 +42 =52, in this situation,3,4, and 5 are a Pythagorean triple. The other one is a triangle that has 2 angles that each measure 45 degrees. Triangles that do not have an angle measuring 90° are called oblique triangles, a triangle with all interior angles measuring less than 90° is an acute triangle or acute-angled triangle. If c is the length of the longest side, then a2 + b2 > c2, a triangle with one interior angle measuring more than 90° is an obtuse triangle or obtuse-angled triangle. If c is the length of the longest side, then a2 + b2 < c2, a triangle with an interior angle of 180° is degenerate

21.
Face (geometry)
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In solid geometry, a face is a flat surface that forms part of the boundary of a solid object, a three-dimensional solid bounded exclusively by flat faces is a polyhedron. In more technical treatments of the geometry of polyhedra and higher-dimensional polytopes, in elementary geometry, a face is a polygon on the boundary of a polyhedron. Other names for a polygonal face include side of a polyhedron, for example, any of the six squares that bound a cube is a face of the cube. Sometimes face is used to refer to the 2-dimensional features of a 4-polytope. With this meaning, the 4-dimensional tesseract has 24 square faces, some other polygons, which are not faces, are also important for polyhedra and tessellations. These include Petrie polygons, vertex figures and facets, any convex polyhedrons surface has Euler characteristic V − E + F =2, where V is the number of vertices, E is the number of edges, and F is the number of faces. This equation is known as Eulers polyhedron formula, thus the number of faces is 2 more than the excess of the number of edges over the number of vertices. For example, a cube has 12 edges and 8 vertices, in higher-dimensional geometry the faces of a polytope are features of all dimensions. A face of dimension k is called a k-face, for example, the polygonal faces of an ordinary polyhedron are 2-faces. In set theory, the set of faces of a polytope includes the polytope itself, for any n-polytope, −1 ≤ k ≤ n. For example, with meaning, the faces of a cube include the empty set, its vertices, edges and squares. Formally, a face of a polytope P is the intersection of P with any closed halfspace whose boundary is disjoint from the interior of P, from this definition it follows that the set of faces of a polytope includes the polytope itself and the empty set. In other areas of mathematics, such as the theories of abstract polytopes and star polytopes, abstract theory still requires that the set of faces include the polytope itself and the empty set. A cell is an element of a 4-dimensional polytope or 3-dimensional tessellation. Cells are facets for 4-polytopes and 3-honeycombs, examples, In higher-dimensional geometry, the facets of a n-polytope are the -faces of dimension one less than the polytope itself. A polytope is bounded by its facets, for example, The facets of a line segment are its 0-faces or vertices. The facets of a polygon are its 1-faces or edges, the facets of a polyhedron or plane tiling are its 2-faces. The facets of a 4D polytope or 3-honeycomb are its 3-faces, the facets of a 5D polytope or 4-honeycomb are its 4-faces

22.
Edge (geometry)
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For edge in graph theory, see Edge In geometry, an edge is a particular type of line segment joining two vertices in a polygon, polyhedron, or higher-dimensional polytope. In a polygon, an edge is a segment on the boundary. In a polyhedron or more generally a polytope, an edge is a segment where two faces meet. A segment joining two vertices while passing through the interior or exterior is not an edge but instead is called a diagonal. In graph theory, an edge is an abstract object connecting two vertices, unlike polygon and polyhedron edges which have a concrete geometric representation as a line segment. However, any polyhedron can be represented by its skeleton or edge-skeleton, conversely, the graphs that are skeletons of three-dimensional polyhedra can be characterized by Steinitzs theorem as being exactly the 3-vertex-connected planar graphs. Any convex polyhedrons surface has Euler characteristic V − E + F =2, where V is the number of vertices, E is the number of edges and this equation is known as Eulers polyhedron formula. Thus the number of edges is 2 less than the sum of the numbers of vertices and faces, for example, a cube has 8 vertices and 6 faces, and hence 12 edges. In a polygon, two edges meet at each vertex, more generally, by Balinskis theorem, at least d edges meet at every vertex of a convex polytope. Similarly, in a polyhedron, exactly two faces meet at every edge, while in higher dimensional polytopes three or more two-dimensional faces meet at every edge. Thus, the edges of a polygon are its facets, the edges of a 3-dimensional convex polyhedron are its ridges, archived from the original on 4 February 2007

23.
Vertex (geometry)
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In geometry, a vertex is a point where two or more curves, lines, or edges meet. As a consequence of this definition, the point where two lines meet to form an angle and the corners of polygons and polyhedra are vertices. A vertex is a point of a polygon, polyhedron, or other higher-dimensional polytope. However, in theory, vertices may have fewer than two incident edges, which is usually not allowed for geometric vertices. However, a smooth approximation to a polygon will also have additional vertices. A polygon vertex xi of a simple polygon P is a principal polygon vertex if the diagonal intersects the boundary of P only at x and x, there are two types of principal vertices, ears and mouths. A principal vertex xi of a simple polygon P is called an ear if the diagonal that bridges xi lies entirely in P, according to the two ears theorem, every simple polygon has at least two ears. A principal vertex xi of a simple polygon P is called a mouth if the diagonal lies outside the boundary of P. Any convex polyhedrons surface has Euler characteristic V − E + F =2, where V is the number of vertices, E is the number of edges and this equation is known as Eulers polyhedron formula. Thus the number of vertices is 2 more than the excess of the number of edges over the number of faces, for example, a cube has 12 edges and 6 faces, and hence 8 vertices

24.
Convex polytope
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A convex polytope is a special case of a polytope, having the additional property that it is also a convex set of points in the n-dimensional space Rn. Some authors use the terms polytope and convex polyhedron interchangeably. In addition, some require a polytope to be a bounded set. The terms bounded/unbounded convex polytope will be used whenever the boundedness is critical to the discussed issue. Yet other texts treat a convex n-polytope as a surface or -manifold, Convex polytopes play an important role both in various branches of mathematics and in applied areas, most notably in linear programming. A comprehensive and influential book in the subject, called Convex Polytopes, was published in 1967 by Branko Grünbaum, in 2003 the 2nd edition of the book was published, with significant additional material contributed by new writers. In Grünbaums book, and in other texts in discrete geometry. Grünbaum points out that this is solely to avoid the repetition of the word convex. A polytope is called if it is an n-dimensional object in Rn. Many examples of bounded convex polytopes can be found in the article polyhedron, a convex polytope may be defined in a number of ways, depending on what is more suitable for the problem at hand. Grünbaums definition is in terms of a set of points in space. Other important definitions are, as the intersection of half-spaces and as the hull of a set of points. This is equivalent to defining a bounded convex polytope as the hull of a finite set of points. Such a definition is called a vertex representation, for a compact convex polytope, the minimal V-description is unique and it is given by the set of the vertices of the polytope. A convex polytope may be defined as an intersection of a number of half-spaces. Such definition is called a half-space representation, there exist infinitely many H-descriptions of a convex polytope. However, for a convex polytope, the minimal H-description is in fact unique and is given by the set of the facet-defining halfspaces. A closed half-space can be written as an inequality, a 1 x 1 + a 2 x 2 + ⋯ + a n x n ≤ b where n is the dimension of the space containing the polytope under consideration

25.
Three-dimensional space
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Three-dimensional space is a geometric setting in which three values are required to determine the position of an element. This is the meaning of the term dimension. In physics and mathematics, a sequence of n numbers can be understood as a location in n-dimensional space, when n =3, the set of all such locations is called three-dimensional Euclidean space. It is commonly represented by the symbol ℝ3 and this serves as a three-parameter model of the physical universe in which all known matter exists. However, this space is one example of a large variety of spaces in three dimensions called 3-manifolds. Furthermore, in case, these three values can be labeled by any combination of three chosen from the terms width, height, depth, and breadth. In mathematics, analytic geometry describes every point in space by means of three coordinates. Three coordinate axes are given, each perpendicular to the two at the origin, the point at which they cross. They are usually labeled x, y, and z, below are images of the above-mentioned systems. Two distinct points determine a line. Three distinct points are either collinear or determine a unique plane, four distinct points can either be collinear, coplanar or determine the entire space. Two distinct lines can intersect, be parallel or be skew. Two parallel lines, or two intersecting lines, lie in a plane, so skew lines are lines that do not meet. Two distinct planes can either meet in a line or are parallel. Three distinct planes, no pair of which are parallel, can meet in a common line. In the last case, the three lines of intersection of each pair of planes are mutually parallel, a line can lie in a given plane, intersect that plane in a unique point or be parallel to the plane. In the last case, there will be lines in the plane that are parallel to the given line, a hyperplane is a subspace of one dimension less than the dimension of the full space. The hyperplanes of a space are the two-dimensional subspaces, that is

26.
Euclidean geometry
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Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to the Alexandrian Greek mathematician Euclid, which he described in his textbook on geometry, the Elements. Euclids method consists in assuming a set of intuitively appealing axioms. Although many of Euclids results had been stated by earlier mathematicians, Euclid was the first to show how these propositions could fit into a comprehensive deductive and logical system. The Elements begins with plane geometry, still taught in school as the first axiomatic system. It goes on to the geometry of three dimensions. Much of the Elements states results of what are now called algebra and number theory, for more than two thousand years, the adjective Euclidean was unnecessary because no other sort of geometry had been conceived. Euclids axioms seemed so obvious that any theorem proved from them was deemed true in an absolute, often metaphysical. Today, however, many other self-consistent non-Euclidean geometries are known, Euclidean geometry is an example of synthetic geometry, in that it proceeds logically from axioms to propositions without the use of coordinates. This is in contrast to analytic geometry, which uses coordinates, the Elements is mainly a systematization of earlier knowledge of geometry. Its improvement over earlier treatments was recognized, with the result that there was little interest in preserving the earlier ones. There are 13 total books in the Elements, Books I–IV, Books V and VII–X deal with number theory, with numbers treated geometrically via their representation as line segments with various lengths. Notions such as numbers and rational and irrational numbers are introduced. The infinitude of prime numbers is proved, a typical result is the 1,3 ratio between the volume of a cone and a cylinder with the same height and base. Euclidean geometry is a system, in which all theorems are derived from a small number of axioms. To produce a straight line continuously in a straight line. To describe a circle with any centre and distance and that all right angles are equal to one another. Although Euclids statement of the only explicitly asserts the existence of the constructions. The Elements also include the five common notions, Things that are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another

27.
Simplex
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In geometry, a simplex is a generalization of the notion of a triangle or tetrahedron to arbitrary dimensions. Specifically, a k-simplex is a polytope which is the convex hull of its k +1 vertices. More formally, suppose the k +1 points u 0, …, u k ∈ R k are affinely independent, then, the simplex determined by them is the set of points C =. For example, a 2-simplex is a triangle, a 3-simplex is a tetrahedron, a single point may be considered a 0-simplex, and a line segment may be considered a 1-simplex. A simplex may be defined as the smallest convex set containing the given vertices, a regular simplex is a simplex that is also a regular polytope. A regular n-simplex may be constructed from a regular -simplex by connecting a new vertex to all original vertices by the edge length. In topology and combinatorics, it is common to “glue together” simplices to form a simplicial complex, the associated combinatorial structure is called an abstract simplicial complex, in which context the word “simplex” simply means any finite set of vertices. A 1-simplex is a line segment, the convex hull of any nonempty subset of the n+1 points that define an n-simplex is called a face of the simplex. In particular, the hull of a subset of size m+1 is an m-simplex. The 0-faces are called the vertices, the 1-faces are called the edges, the -faces are called the facets, in general, the number of m-faces is equal to the binomial coefficient. Consequently, the number of m-faces of an n-simplex may be found in column of row of Pascals triangle, a simplex A is a coface of a simplex B if B is a face of A. Face and facet can have different meanings when describing types of simplices in a simplicial complex, see simplical complex for more detail. The regular simplex family is the first of three regular polytope families, labeled by Coxeter as αn, the two being the cross-polytope family, labeled as βn, and the hypercubes, labeled as γn. A fourth family, the infinite tessellation of hypercubes, he labeled as δn, an -simplex can be constructed as a join of an n-simplex and a point. An -simplex can be constructed as a join of an m-simplex, the two simplices are oriented to be completely normal from each other, with translation in a direction orthogonal to both of them. A 1-simplex is a joint of two points, ∨ =2, a general 2-simplex is the join of 3 points, ∨∨. An isosceles triangle is the join of a 1-simplex and a point, a general 3-simplex is the join of 4 points, ∨∨∨. A 3-simplex with mirror symmetry can be expressed as the join of an edge and 2 points, a 3-simplex with triangular symmetry can be expressed as the join of an equilateral triangle and 1 point,3. ∨ or ∨

28.
Pyramid (geometry)
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In geometry, a pyramid is a polyhedron formed by connecting a polygonal base and a point, called the apex. Each base edge and apex form a triangle, called a lateral face and it is a conic solid with polygonal base. A pyramid with a base has n +1 vertices, n +1 faces. A right pyramid has its apex directly above the centroid of its base, nonright pyramids are called oblique pyramids. A regular pyramid has a polygon base and is usually implied to be a right pyramid. When unspecified, a pyramid is usually assumed to be a square pyramid. A triangle-based pyramid is often called a tetrahedron. Among oblique pyramids, like acute and obtuse triangles, a pyramid can be called if its apex is above the interior of the base and obtuse if its apex is above the exterior of the base. A right-angled pyramid has its apex above an edge or vertex of the base, in a tetrahedron these qualifiers change based on which face is considered the base. Pyramids are a subclass of the prismatoids, pyramids can be doubled into bipyramids by adding a second offset point on the other side of the base plane. A right pyramid with a base has isosceles triangle sides, with symmetry is Cnv or. It can be given an extended Schläfli symbol ∨, representing a point, a join operation creates a new edge between all pairs of vertices of the two joined figures. The trigonal or triangular pyramid with all equilateral triangles faces becomes the regular tetrahedron, a lower symmetry case of the triangular pyramid is C3v, which has an equilateral triangle base, and 3 identical isosceles triangle sides. The square and pentagonal pyramids can also be composed of convex polygons. Right pyramids with regular star polygon bases are called star pyramids, for example, the pentagrammic pyramid has a pentagram base and 5 intersecting triangle sides. A right pyramid can be named as ∨P, where is the point, ∨ is a join operator. It has C1v symmetry from two different base-apex orientations, and C2v in its full symmetry, a rectangular right pyramid, written as ∨, and a rhombic pyramid, as ∨, both have symmetry C2v. The volume of a pyramid is V =13 b h and this works for any polygon, regular or non-regular, and any location of the apex, provided that h is measured as the perpendicular distance from the plane containing the base

29.
Polygon
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In elementary geometry, a polygon /ˈpɒlɪɡɒn/ is a plane figure that is bounded by a finite chain of straight line segments closing in a loop to form a closed polygonal chain or circuit. These segments are called its edges or sides, and the points where two edges meet are the vertices or corners. The interior of the polygon is called its body. An n-gon is a polygon with n sides, for example, a polygon is a 2-dimensional example of the more general polytope in any number of dimensions. The basic geometrical notion of a polygon has been adapted in various ways to suit particular purposes, mathematicians are often concerned only with the bounding closed polygonal chain and with simple polygons which do not self-intersect, and they often define a polygon accordingly. A polygonal boundary may be allowed to intersect itself, creating star polygons and these and other generalizations of polygons are described below. The word polygon derives from the Greek adjective πολύς much, many and it has been suggested that γόνυ knee may be the origin of “gon”. Polygons are primarily classified by the number of sides, Polygons may be characterized by their convexity or type of non-convexity, Convex, any line drawn through the polygon meets its boundary exactly twice. As a consequence, all its interior angles are less than 180°, equivalently, any line segment with endpoints on the boundary passes through only interior points between its endpoints. Non-convex, a line may be found which meets its boundary more than twice, equivalently, there exists a line segment between two boundary points that passes outside the polygon. Simple, the boundary of the polygon does not cross itself, there is at least one interior angle greater than 180°. Star-shaped, the interior is visible from at least one point. The polygon must be simple, and may be convex or concave, self-intersecting, the boundary of the polygon crosses itself. Branko Grünbaum calls these coptic, though this term does not seem to be widely used, star polygon, a polygon which self-intersects in a regular way. A polygon cannot be both a star and star-shaped, equiangular, all corner angles are equal. Cyclic, all lie on a single circle, called the circumcircle. Isogonal or vertex-transitive, all lie within the same symmetry orbit. The polygon is cyclic and equiangular

30.
Tangent
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In geometry, the tangent line to a plane curve at a given point is the straight line that just touches the curve at that point. Leibniz defined it as the line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve, a similar definition applies to space curves and curves in n-dimensional Euclidean space. Similarly, the tangent plane to a surface at a point is the plane that just touches the surface at that point. The concept of a tangent is one of the most fundamental notions in geometry and has been extensively generalized. The word tangent comes from the Latin tangere, to touch, euclid makes several references to the tangent to a circle in book III of the Elements. In Apollonius work Conics he defines a tangent as being a line such that no other straight line could fall between it and the curve, archimedes found the tangent to an Archimedean spiral by considering the path of a point moving along the curve. Independently Descartes used his method of normals based on the observation that the radius of a circle is always normal to the circle itself and these methods led to the development of differential calculus in the 17th century. Many people contributed, Roberval discovered a method of drawing tangents. René-François de Sluse and Johannes Hudde found algebraic algorithms for finding tangents, further developments included those of John Wallis and Isaac Barrow, leading to the theory of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. An 1828 definition of a tangent was a line which touches a curve. This old definition prevents inflection points from having any tangent and it has been dismissed and the modern definitions are equivalent to those of Leibniz who defined the tangent line as the line through a pair of infinitely close points on the curve. The tangent at A is the limit when point B approximates or tends to A, the existence and uniqueness of the tangent line depends on a certain type of mathematical smoothness, known as differentiability. At most points, the tangent touches the curve without crossing it, a point where the tangent crosses the curve is called an inflection point. Circles, parabolas, hyperbolas and ellipses do not have any point, but more complicated curves do have, like the graph of a cubic function. Conversely, it may happen that the curve lies entirely on one side of a line passing through a point on it. This is the case, for example, for a passing through the vertex of a triangle. In convex geometry, such lines are called supporting lines, the geometrical idea of the tangent line as the limit of secant lines serves as the motivation for analytical methods that are used to find tangent lines explicitly. The question of finding the tangent line to a graph, or the tangent line problem, was one of the central questions leading to the development of calculus in the 17th century, suppose that a curve is given as the graph of a function, y = f

31.
Equilateral triangle
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In geometry, an equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides are equal. In the familiar Euclidean geometry, equilateral triangles are also equiangular and they are regular polygons, and can therefore also be referred to as regular triangles. Thus these are properties that are unique to equilateral triangles, the three medians have equal lengths. The three angle bisectors have equal lengths, every triangle center of an equilateral triangle coincides with its centroid, which implies that the equilateral triangle is the only triangle with no Euler line connecting some of the centers. For some pairs of triangle centers, the fact that they coincide is enough to ensure that the triangle is equilateral, in particular, A triangle is equilateral if any two of the circumcenter, incenter, centroid, or orthocenter coincide. It is also equilateral if its circumcenter coincides with the Nagel point, for any triangle, the three medians partition the triangle into six smaller triangles. A triangle is equilateral if and only if any three of the triangles have either the same perimeter or the same inradius. A triangle is equilateral if and only if the circumcenters of any three of the triangles have the same distance from the centroid. Morleys trisector theorem states that, in any triangle, the three points of intersection of the adjacent angle trisectors form an equilateral triangle, a version of the isoperimetric inequality for triangles states that the triangle of greatest area among all those with a given perimeter is equilateral. That is, PA, PB, and PC satisfy the inequality that any two of them sum to at least as great as the third. By Eulers inequality, the triangle has the smallest ratio R/r of the circumradius to the inradius of any triangle, specifically. The triangle of largest area of all those inscribed in a circle is equilateral. The ratio of the area of the incircle to the area of an equilateral triangle, the ratio of the area to the square of the perimeter of an equilateral triangle,1123, is larger than that for any other triangle. If a segment splits an equilateral triangle into two regions with equal perimeters and with areas A1 and A2, then 79 ≤ A1 A2 ≤97, in no other triangle is there a point for which this ratio is as small as 2. For any point P in the plane, with p, q, and t from the vertices A, B. For any point P on the circle of an equilateral triangle, with distances p, q. There are numerous triangle inequalities that hold with equality if and only if the triangle is equilateral, an equilateral triangle is the most symmetrical triangle, having 3 lines of reflection and rotational symmetry of order 3 about its center. Its symmetry group is the group of order 6 D3

32.
Angular defect
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In geometry, the defect means the failure of some angles to add up to the expected amount of 360° or 180°, when such angles in the plane would. The opposite notion is the excess, classically the defect arises in two ways, the defect of a vertex of a polyhedron, the defect of a hyperbolic triangle, and the excess also arises in two ways, the excess of a toroidal polyhedron. The excess of a triangle, In the plane, angles about a point add up to 360°. In modern terms, the defect at a vertex or over a triangle is precisely the curvature at that point or the total over the triangle, for a polyhedron, the defect at a vertex equals 2π minus the sum of all the angles at the vertex. If a polyhedron is convex, then the defect of each vertex is always positive, if the sum of the angles exceeds a full turn, as occurs in some vertices of many non-convex polyhedra, then the defect is negative. The concept of defect extends to higher dimensions as the amount by which the sum of the angles of the cells at a peak falls short of a full circle. The defect of any of the vertices of a dodecahedron is 36°, or π/5 radians. Each of the angles measures 108°, three of these meet at each vertex, so the defect is 360° − = 36°, the polyhedron need not be convex. A generalization says the number of circles in the total defect equals the Euler characteristic of the polyhedron and this is a special case of the Gauss–Bonnet theorem which relates the integral of the Gaussian curvature to the Euler characteristic. Here the Gaussian curvature is concentrated at the vertices, on the faces and edges the Gaussian curvature is zero and this can be used to calculate the number V of vertices of a polyhedron by totaling the angles of all the faces, and adding the total defect. This total will have one circle for every vertex in the polyhedron. Care has to be taken to use the correct Euler characteristic for the polyhedron and it is tempting to think that every non-convex polyhedron must have some vertices whose defect is negative, but this need not be the case. Two counterexamples to this are the small stellated dodecahedron and the great stellated dodecahedron, now consider the same cube where the square pyramid goes into the cube, this is concave, but the defects remain the same and so are all positive. Negative defect indicates that the vertex resembles a saddle point, whereas positive defect indicates that the vertex resembles a local maximum or minimum, richeson, D. Eulers Gem, The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology, Princeton, Pages 220-225

33.
Tessellation
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A tessellation of a flat surface is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellations can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety of geometries, a periodic tiling has a repeating pattern. The patterns formed by periodic tilings can be categorized into 17 wallpaper groups, a tiling that lacks a repeating pattern is called non-periodic. An aperiodic tiling uses a set of tile shapes that cannot form a repeating pattern. In the geometry of higher dimensions, a space-filling or honeycomb is called a tessellation of space. A real physical tessellation is a made of materials such as cemented ceramic squares or hexagons. Such tilings may be decorative patterns, or may have such as providing durable and water-resistant pavement. Historically, tessellations were used in Ancient Rome and in Islamic art such as in the decorative geometric tiling of the Alhambra palace, in the twentieth century, the work of M. C. Escher often made use of tessellations, both in ordinary Euclidean geometry and in geometry, for artistic effect. Tessellations are sometimes employed for decorative effect in quilting, Tessellations form a class of patterns in nature, for example in the arrays of hexagonal cells found in honeycombs. Tessellations were used by the Sumerians in building wall decorations formed by patterns of clay tiles, decorative mosaic tilings made of small squared blocks called tesserae were widely employed in classical antiquity, sometimes displaying geometric patterns. In 1619 Johannes Kepler made a documented study of tessellations. He wrote about regular and semiregular tessellations in his Harmonices Mundi, he was possibly the first to explore and to explain the structures of honeycomb. Some two hundred years later in 1891, the Russian crystallographer Yevgraf Fyodorov proved that every periodic tiling of the features one of seventeen different groups of isometries. Fyodorovs work marked the beginning of the mathematical study of tessellations. Other prominent contributors include Shubnikov and Belov, and Heinrich Heesch, in Latin, tessella is a small cubical piece of clay, stone or glass used to make mosaics. The word tessella means small square and it corresponds to the everyday term tiling, which refers to applications of tessellations, often made of glazed clay. Tessellation or tiling in two dimensions is a topic in geometry that studies how shapes, known as tiles, can be arranged to fill a plane without any gaps, according to a given set of rules

34.
Regular octahedron
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In geometry, an octahedron is a polyhedron with eight faces, twelve edges, and six vertices. A regular octahedron is a Platonic solid composed of eight equilateral triangles, a regular octahedron is the dual polyhedron of a cube. It is a square bipyramid in any of three orthogonal orientations and it is also a triangular antiprism in any of four orientations. An octahedron is the case of the more general concept of a cross polytope. A regular octahedron is a 3-ball in the Manhattan metric, the second and third correspond to the B2 and A2 Coxeter planes. The octahedron can also be represented as a tiling. This projection is conformal, preserving angles but not areas or lengths, straight lines on the sphere are projected as circular arcs on the plane. An octahedron with edge length √2 can be placed with its center at the origin and its vertices on the coordinate axes, the Cartesian coordinates of the vertices are then. In an x–y–z Cartesian coordinate system, the octahedron with center coordinates, additionally the inertia tensor of the stretched octahedron is I =. These reduce to the equations for the regular octahedron when x m = y m = z m = a 22, the interior of the compound of two dual tetrahedra is an octahedron, and this compound, called the stella octangula, is its first and only stellation. Correspondingly, an octahedron is the result of cutting off from a regular tetrahedron. One can also divide the edges of an octahedron in the ratio of the mean to define the vertices of an icosahedron. There are five octahedra that define any given icosahedron in this fashion, octahedra and tetrahedra can be alternated to form a vertex, edge, and face-uniform tessellation of space, called the octet truss by Buckminster Fuller. This is the only such tiling save the regular tessellation of cubes, another is a tessellation of octahedra and cuboctahedra. The octahedron is unique among the Platonic solids in having a number of faces meeting at each vertex. Consequently, it is the member of that group to possess mirror planes that do not pass through any of the faces. Using the standard nomenclature for Johnson solids, an octahedron would be called a square bipyramid, truncation of two opposite vertices results in a square bifrustum. The octahedron is 4-connected, meaning that it takes the removal of four vertices to disconnect the remaining vertices and it is one of only four 4-connected simplicial well-covered polyhedra, meaning that all of the maximal independent sets of its vertices have the same size

35.
Tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb
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The tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, alternated cubic honeycomb is a quasiregular space-filling tessellation in Euclidean 3-space. It is composed of alternating octahedra and tetrahedra in a ratio of 1,2, other names include half cubic honeycomb, half cubic cellulation, or tetragonal disphenoidal cellulation. John Horton Conway calls this honeycomb a tetroctahedrille, and its dual dodecahedrille and it is vertex-transitive with 8 tetrahedra and 6 octahedra around each vertex. It is edge-transitive with 2 tetrahedra and 2 octahedra alternating on each edge, a geometric honeycomb is a space-filling of polyhedral or higher-dimensional cells, so that there are no gaps. It is an example of the general mathematical tiling or tessellation in any number of dimensions. Honeycombs are usually constructed in ordinary Euclidean space, like the uniform honeycombs. They may also be constructed in non-Euclidean spaces, such as hyperbolic uniform honeycombs, any finite uniform polytope can be projected to its circumsphere to form a uniform honeycomb in spherical space. It is also part of another family of uniform honeycombs called simplectic honeycombs. In this case of 3-space, the honeycomb is alternated, reducing the cubic cells to tetrahedra. As such it can be represented by an extended Schläfli symbol h as containing half the vertices of the cubic honeycomb, theres a similar honeycomb called gyrated tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb which has layers rotated 60 degrees so half the edges have neighboring rather than alternating tetrahedra and octahedra. Each slice will contain up and downward facing square pyramids and tetrahedra sitting on their edges, a second slice direction needs no new faces and includes alternating tetrahedral and octahedral. This slab honeycomb is a scaliform honeycomb rather than uniform because it has nonuniform cells, the alternated cubic honeycomb can be orthogonally projected into the planar square tiling by a geometric folding operation that maps one pairs of mirrors into each other. The projection of the cubic honeycomb creates two offset copies of the square tiling vertex arrangement of the plane, Its vertex arrangement represents an A3 lattice or D3 lattice. It is the 3-dimensional case of a simplectic honeycomb and its Voronoi cell is a rhombic dodecahedron, the dual of the cuboctahedron vertex figure for the tet-oct honeycomb. The D+3 packing can be constructed by the union of two D3 lattices, the D+ n packing is only a lattice for even dimensions. The kissing number of the D*3 lattice is 8 and its Voronoi tessellation is a cubic honeycomb. The, Coxeter group generates 15 permutations of uniform honeycombs,9 with distinct geometry including the cubic honeycomb. The expanded cubic honeycomb is geometrically identical to the cubic honeycomb, the, Coxeter group generates 9 permutations of uniform honeycombs,4 with distinct geometry including the alternated cubic honeycomb

36.
Polytope compound
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A polyhedral compound is a figure that is composed of several polyhedra sharing a common centre. They are the analogs of polygonal compounds such as the hexagram. The outer vertices of a compound can be connected to form a convex polyhedron called the convex hull, the compound is a facetting of the convex hull. Another convex polyhedron is formed by the central space common to all members of the compound. This polyhedron can be used as the core for a set of stellations, a regular polyhedron compound can be defined as a compound which, like a regular polyhedron, is vertex-transitive, edge-transitive, and face-transitive. There are five regular compounds of polyhedra, best known is the compound of two tetrahedra, often called the stella octangula, a name given to it by Kepler. The vertices of the two tetrahedra define a cube and the intersection of the two an octahedron, which shares the same face-planes as the compound, thus it is a stellation of the octahedron, and in fact, the only finite stellation thereof. The stella octangula can also be regarded as a dual-regular compound, the compound of five tetrahedra comes in two enantiomorphic versions, which together make up the compound of 10 tetrahedra. Each of the compounds is self-dual, and the compound of 5 cubes is dual to the compound of 5 octahedra. There are five such compounds of the regular polyhedra, the tetrahedron is self-dual, so the dual compound of a tetrahedron with its dual polyhedron is also the regular Stella octangula. The cube-octahedron and dodecahedron-icosahedron dual compounds are the first stellations of the cuboctahedron and icosidodecahedron, the compound of the small stellated dodecahedron and great dodecahedron looks outwardly the same as the small stellated dodecahedron, because the great dodecahedron is completely contained inside. For this reason, the image shown above shows the small stellated dodecahedron in wireframe, in 1976 John Skilling published Uniform Compounds of Uniform Polyhedra which enumerated 75 compounds made from uniform polyhedra with rotational symmetry. This list includes the five regular compounds above, the 75 uniform compounds are listed in the Table below. Most are shown singularly colored by each polyhedron element, some chiral pairs of face groups are colored by symmetry of the faces within each polyhedron. If the definition of a polyhedron is generalised they are uniform. The section for entianomorphic pairs in Skillings list does not contain the compound of two great snub dodecicosidodecahedra, as the faces would coincide. Removing the coincident faces results in the compound of twenty octahedra, in 4-dimensions, there are a large number of regular compounds of regular polytopes. There are eighteen two-parameter families of regular tessellations of the Euclidean plane

37.
Stellated octahedron
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The stellated octahedron is the only stellation of the octahedron. It is also called the stella octangula, a given to it by Johannes Kepler in 1609. It was depicted in Paciolis Divina Proportione,1509 and it is the simplest of five regular polyhedral compounds, and the only regular compound of two tetrahedra. It can also be seen as one of the stages in the construction of a 3D Koch Snowflake, the stellated octahedron can be constructed in several ways, It is a stellation of the regular octahedron, sharing the same face planes. It is also a regular compound, when constructed as the union of two regular tetrahedra. It can be obtained as an augmentation of the regular octahedron, in this construction it has the same topology as the convex Catalan solid, the triakis octahedron, which has much shorter pyramids. It is a facetting of the cube, sharing the vertex arrangement, a compound of two spherical tetrahedra can be constructed, as illustrated. The two tetrahedra of the view of the stellated octahedron are desmic, meaning that each edge of one tetrahedron crosses two opposite edges of the other tetrahedron. One of these two crossings is visible in the octahedron, the other crossing occurs at a point at infinity of the projective space. The same twelve tetrahedron vertices also form the points of Reyes configuration, the stella octangula numbers are figurate numbers that count the number of balls that can be arranged into the shape of a stellated octahedron. They are 0,1,14,51,124,245,426,679,1016,1449,1990, the stellated octahedron appears with several other polyhedra and polyhedral compounds in M. C. Eschers print Stars, and provides the form in Eschers Double Planetoid. Peter R. Cromwell, Polyhedra, Cambridge University Press Polyhedra H. S. M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, Dover edition, ISBN 0-486-61480-8,3.6 The five regular compounds, pp. 47-50,6.2 Stellating the Platonic solids, pp. 96-104 Weisstein, Weisstein, Eric W. Compound of two tetrahedra

38.
Unit sphere
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Usually a specific point has been distinguished as the origin of the space under study and it is understood that a unit sphere or unit ball is centered at that point. Therefore one speaks of the ball or the unit sphere. For example, a sphere is the surface of what is commonly called a circle, while such a circles interior. Similarly, a sphere is the surface of the Euclidean solid known colloquially as a sphere, while the interior. A unit sphere is simply a sphere of radius one, the importance of the unit sphere is that any sphere can be transformed to a unit sphere by a combination of translation and scaling. In this way the properties of spheres in general can be reduced to the study of the unit sphere. In Euclidean space of n dimensions, the sphere is the set of all points which satisfy the equation x 12 + x 22 + ⋯ + x n 2 =1. The volume of the ball in n dimensions, which we denote Vn. It is V n = π n /2 Γ = { π n /2 /, I f n ≥0 i s e v e n, π ⌊ n /2 ⌋2 ⌈ n /2 ⌉ / n. I f n ≥0 i s o d d, where n. is the double factorial, the surface areas and the volumes for some values of n are as follows, where the decimal expanded values for n ≥2 are rounded to the displayed precision. The An values satisfy the recursion, A0 =0 A1 =2 A2 =2 π A n =2 π n −2 A n −2 for n >2. The Vn values satisfy the recursion, V0 =1 V1 =2 V n =2 π n V n −2 for n >1. The surface area of a sphere with radius r is An rn−1. For instance, the area is A = 4π r 2 for the surface of the ball of radius r. The volume is V = 4π r 3 /3 for the ball of radius r. More precisely, the unit ball in a normed vector space V. It is the interior of the unit ball of. The latter is the disjoint union of the former and their common border, the shape of the unit ball is entirely dependent on the chosen norm, it may well have corners, and for example may look like n, in the case of the norm l∞ in Rn

39.
Alternation (geometry)
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In geometry, an alternation or partial truncation, is an operation on a polygon, polyhedron, tiling, or higher dimensional polytope that removes alternate vertices. Coxeter labels an alternation by a prefixed by an h, standing for hemi or half, because alternation reduce all polygon faces to half as many sides, it can only be applied for polytopes with all even-sided faces. An alternated square face becomes a digon, and being degenerate, is reduced to a single edge. More generally any vertex-uniform polyhedron or tiling with a configuration consisting of all even-numbered elements can be alternated. For example, the alternation a vertex figure with 2a. 2b. 2c is a.3. b.3. c.3 where the three is the number of elements in this vertex figure. A special case is square faces whose order divide in half into degenerate digons, a snub can be seen as an alternation of a truncated regular or truncated quasiregular polyhedron. In general a polyhedron can be snubbed if its truncation has only even-sided faces, all truncated rectified polyhedra can be snubbed, not just from regular polyhedra. The snub square antiprism is an example of a general snub and this alternation operation applies to higher-dimensional polytopes and honeycombs as well, but in general most of the results of this operation will not be uniform. The voids created by the vertices will not in general create uniform facets. Examples, Honeycombs An alternated cubic honeycomb is the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb, an alternated hexagonal prismatic honeycomb is the gyrated alternated cubic honeycomb. 4-polytope An alternated truncated 24-cell is the snub 24-cell, 4-honeycombs, An alternated truncated 24-cell honeycomb is the snub 24-cell honeycomb. A hypercube can always be alternated into a uniform demihypercube, cube → Tetrahedron → Tesseract → 16-cell → Penteract → demipenteract Hexeract → demihexeract. Coxeter also used the operator a, which contains both halves, so retains the original symmetry, for even-sided regular polyhedra, a represents a compound polyhedron with two opposite copies of h. For odd-sided, greater than 3, regular polyhedra a, becomes a star polyhedron, Norman Johnson extended the use of the altered operator a, b for blended, and c for converted, as, and respectively. The compound polyhedron, stellated octahedron can be represented by a, the star-polyhedron, small ditrigonal icosidodecahedron, can be represented by a, and. Here all the pentagons have been alternated into pentagrams, and triangles have been inserted to take up the free edges. A similar operation can truncate alternate vertices, rather than just removing them, below is a set of polyhedra that can be generated from the Catalan solids. These have two types of vertices which can be alternately truncated, truncating the higher order vertices and both vertex types produce these forms, Conway polyhedral notation Wythoff construction Coxeter, H. S. M

40.
Cube
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In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. The cube is the only regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids and it has 6 faces,12 edges, and 8 vertices. The cube is also a square parallelepiped, an equilateral cuboid and it is a regular square prism in three orientations, and a trigonal trapezohedron in four orientations. The cube is dual to the octahedron and it has cubical or octahedral symmetry. The cube has four special orthogonal projections, centered, on a vertex, edges, face, the first and third correspond to the A2 and B2 Coxeter planes. The cube can also be represented as a tiling. This projection is conformal, preserving angles but not areas or lengths, straight lines on the sphere are projected as circular arcs on the plane. In analytic geometry, a surface with center and edge length of 2a is the locus of all points such that max = a. For a cube of length a, As the volume of a cube is the third power of its sides a × a × a, third powers are called cubes, by analogy with squares. A cube has the largest volume among cuboids with a surface area. Also, a cube has the largest volume among cuboids with the same linear size. They were unable to solve this problem, and in 1837 Pierre Wantzel proved it to be impossible because the root of 2 is not a constructible number. The cube has three uniform colorings, named by the colors of the faces around each vertex,111,112,123. The cube has three classes of symmetry, which can be represented by coloring the faces. The highest octahedral symmetry Oh has all the faces the same color, the dihedral symmetry D4h comes from the cube being a prism, with all four sides being the same color. The lowest symmetry D2h is also a symmetry, with sides alternating colors. Each symmetry form has a different Wythoff symbol, a cube has eleven nets, that is, there are eleven ways to flatten a hollow cube by cutting seven edges. To color the cube so that no two adjacent faces have the color, one would need at least three colors

41.
Area
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Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional figure or shape, or planar lamina, in the plane. Surface area is its analog on the surface of a three-dimensional object. It is the analog of the length of a curve or the volume of a solid. The area of a shape can be measured by comparing the shape to squares of a fixed size, in the International System of Units, the standard unit of area is the square metre, which is the area of a square whose sides are one metre long. A shape with an area of three square metres would have the area as three such squares. In mathematics, the square is defined to have area one. There are several formulas for the areas of simple shapes such as triangles, rectangles. Using these formulas, the area of any polygon can be found by dividing the polygon into triangles, for shapes with curved boundary, calculus is usually required to compute the area. Indeed, the problem of determining the area of plane figures was a motivation for the historical development of calculus. For a solid such as a sphere, cone, or cylinder. Formulas for the areas of simple shapes were computed by the ancient Greeks. Area plays an important role in modern mathematics, in addition to its obvious importance in geometry and calculus, area is related to the definition of determinants in linear algebra, and is a basic property of surfaces in differential geometry. In analysis, the area of a subset of the plane is defined using Lebesgue measure, in general, area in higher mathematics is seen as a special case of volume for two-dimensional regions. Area can be defined through the use of axioms, defining it as a function of a collection of certain plane figures to the set of real numbers and it can be proved that such a function exists. An approach to defining what is meant by area is through axioms, area can be defined as a function from a collection M of special kind of plane figures to the set of real numbers which satisfies the following properties, For all S in M, a ≥0. If S and T are in M then so are S ∪ T and S ∩ T, if S and T are in M with S ⊆ T then T − S is in M and a = a − a. If a set S is in M and S is congruent to T then T is also in M, every rectangle R is in M. If the rectangle has length h and breadth k then a = hk, let Q be a set enclosed between two step regions S and T

42.
Volume
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Volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by a closed surface, for example, the space that a substance or shape occupies or contains. Volume is often quantified numerically using the SI derived unit, the cubic metre, three dimensional mathematical shapes are also assigned volumes. Volumes of some simple shapes, such as regular, straight-edged, Volumes of a complicated shape can be calculated by integral calculus if a formula exists for the shapes boundary. Where a variance in shape and volume occurs, such as those that exist between different human beings, these can be calculated using techniques such as the Body Volume Index. One-dimensional figures and two-dimensional shapes are assigned zero volume in the three-dimensional space, the volume of a solid can be determined by fluid displacement. Displacement of liquid can also be used to determine the volume of a gas, the combined volume of two substances is usually greater than the volume of one of the substances. However, sometimes one substance dissolves in the other and the volume is not additive. In differential geometry, volume is expressed by means of the volume form, in thermodynamics, volume is a fundamental parameter, and is a conjugate variable to pressure. Any unit of length gives a unit of volume, the volume of a cube whose sides have the given length. For example, a cubic centimetre is the volume of a cube whose sides are one centimetre in length, in the International System of Units, the standard unit of volume is the cubic metre. The metric system also includes the litre as a unit of volume, thus 1 litre =3 =1000 cubic centimetres =0.001 cubic metres, so 1 cubic metre =1000 litres. Small amounts of liquid are often measured in millilitres, where 1 millilitre =0.001 litres =1 cubic centimetre. Capacity is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the applied to the content of a vessel, and to liquids, grain, or the like. Capacity is not identical in meaning to volume, though closely related, Units of capacity are the SI litre and its derived units, and Imperial units such as gill, pint, gallon, and others. Units of volume are the cubes of units of length, in SI the units of volume and capacity are closely related, one litre is exactly 1 cubic decimetre, the capacity of a cube with a 10 cm side. In other systems the conversion is not trivial, the capacity of a fuel tank is rarely stated in cubic feet, for example. The density of an object is defined as the ratio of the mass to the volume, the inverse of density is specific volume which is defined as volume divided by mass. Specific volume is an important in thermodynamics where the volume of a working fluid is often an important parameter of a system being studied

43.
Tetrahedral molecular geometry
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In a tetrahedral molecular geometry, a central atom is located at the center with four substituents that are located at the corners of a tetrahedron. The bond angles are cos−1 =109.4712206. ° ≈109. 5° when all four substituents are the same, the perfectly symmetrical tetrahedron belongs to point group Td, but most tetrahedral molecules have lower symmetry. Aside from virtually all saturated organic compounds, most compounds of Si, Ge, often tetrahedral molecules feature multiple bonding to the outer ligands, as in xenon tetroxide, the perchlorate ion, the sulfate ion, the phosphate ion. Thiazyl trifluoride is tetrahedral, featuring a triple bond. Other molecules have an arrangement of electron pairs around a central atom. However the usual classification considers only the atoms and not the lone pair. The H–N–H angles are 107°, contracted from 109.5 and this difference is attributed to the influence of the lone pair which exerts a greater repulsive influence than a bonded atom. Again the geometry is widespread, particularly so for complexes where the metal has d0 or d10 configuration, illustrative examples include tetrakispalladium, nickel carbonyl, and titanium tetrachloride. Many complexes with incompletely filled d-shells are often tetrahedral, e. g. the tetrahalides of iron, cobalt, however in liquid water or in ice, the lone pairs form hydrogen bonds with neighboring water molecules. The most common arrangement of hydrogen atoms around an oxygen is tetrahedral with two hydrogen atoms bonded to oxygen and two attached by hydrogen bonds. Since the hydrogen bonds vary in many of these water molecules are not symmetrical. Many compounds and complexes adopt bitetrahedral structures, in this motif, the two tetrahedra share a common edge. The inorganic polymer silicon disulfide features a chain of edge-shared tetrahedra. Inversion of tetrahedral occurs widely in organic and main group chemistry, the so-called Walden inversion illustrates the stereochemical consequences of inversion at carbon. Nitrogen inversion in ammonia also entails transient formation of planar NH3, geometrical constraints in a molecule can cause a severe distortion of idealized tetrahedral geometry. In compounds featuring inverted tetrahedral geometry at a carbon atom, all four groups attached to carbon are on one side of a plane. The carbon atom lies at or near the apex of a pyramid with the other four groups at the corners. The simplest examples of organic molecules displaying inverted tetrahedral geometry are the smallest propellanes, such as propellane, or more generally the paddlanes, such molecules are typically strained, resulting in increased reactivity

A disproof of Euclidean geometry as a description of physical space. In a 1919 test of the general theory of relativity, stars (marked with short horizontal lines) were photographed during a solar eclipse. The rays of starlight were bent by the Sun's gravity on their way to the earth. This is interpreted as evidence in favor of Einstein's prediction that gravity would cause deviations from Euclidean geometry.

A dihedral angle is the angle between two intersecting planes. In chemistry it is the angle between planes through two …

Angle between two planes (α, β, green) in a third plane (pink) which cuts the line of intersection at right angles

Free energy diagram of butane as a function of dihedral angle.

Dihedral angle of three vectors, defined as an exterior spherical angle. The longer and shorter black segments are arcs of the great circles passing through b1 and b2 and through b2 and b3, respectively.